I agree with you regarding the dearth of female characters. I did, however, note something that isn’t nothing: precisely zero is made of Elsa’s status as heiress to the throne and then her subsequent status as Queen on the grounds of her being a woman. By the same token, it is immediately granted that Anna is Elsa’s heir. Rather refreshing in a way. I also was amused/cheered by the blink-and-you-miss-it shot of the shopkeeper’s family in the sauna. They consist of:
(1) a gaggle of blond children
and
(2) a man with a handlebar mustache.

But yes, making Sven-the-reindeer or Olaff-the-snowman female (or, for that matter, making the odious old guy who steps on Anna’s toes while dancing female) wouldn’t have added or subtracted anything from the plot.

I know there’s overlap between the readership here and at B&W, but I wanted to draw attention to this post. Ophelia is wondering what the UK is doing right with regard to abortion rights (as compared to the US). As we have people from the UK that comment here, I thought they might have some thoughts they might want to share.

I was thinking, re that question over at B&W, that I can’t say because I don’t know – but then, Tony!, you just made me realise that even without knowing one can of course throw out an idea or two. So I did. (I think it could be to do with our fundagelical minority lacking the protective camouflage and tacit support of a big religious population; most people here tend not to “do” religion in public. So maybe it’s harder for the extremists to get the numbers together here to really harass people).

Hearken back, dear reader, to the days of yesteryear. To the days of You Can’t Do That On Television, Inspector Gadget, or Danger Mouse. Do you have fond memories of childhood shows? How do you feel about updating those shows? What do you think about an all new Danger Mouse? One that aims for gender diversity to boot?

Gorogh, opposablethumbs, Beatrice, cicely, Tony:
Thanks for the well-wishes. It was just like always, we chatted afterwards and went our separate ways. I realize that I invited him to join me at not one, but two events in the next few weeks. Kind of feeling a bit like a pest. We’ll see what happens….

I got home and finally decided to spring for an account on Dating Site. What is the first dat-gum thing that the fucking thing does? Matches me with S at 98%. Fucking algorithms, both validating and condemning my life choices in one snappy little graphic.

“I still feel the default tendency is for there to be a male lead or a male presenter. It’s actually really hard: you can easily say Mr Maker, Mr Tumble, Mr Bloom. It’s harder for women: what do you say: Mrs, Miss or Ms? It’s a bit of a drag really, we’re still defined by our marital status,” said Benbow.

Huh… That’s… not something I’d ever thought about. We seem to be missing a few honorifics in our language. Like the one for women whose marital status is simply not important. Or the one for people whose gender is not important. And why aren’t there different honorifics for men depending on relationship status?

—
Travis:

Thinking about vaping. Does it work?

I have a number of friends who’ve given up real cigarettes for e-cigs. Seems to work for them, plus makes them much more pleasant to be around (Thanks to a bit of family history, I’m really uncomfortable in the presence of cigarette smoke), so it would seem worth a try.

Still lounging, watching Typhoon Neoguri do weird things. This morning (thunk time), it looked as if Neoguri was about to vanish completely due to dry air, but convection built back up during the day. Luckily enough; 1) The storm seems weaker than before, 2) It’s passing farther to the west of Okinawa than predicted, 3) They know how to deal with tropical cyclones, 4) The one nuclear plant in Southern Kyushu looks to be in a position where surge can’t build to threatening levels (13-15 m by Wikipedia), even from a worse-case Cat 3 equivalent.

Still a scary situation for Japan, but Neoguri isn’t really a “once in a decade” storm; more like “once or twice in a year”.

UK film productions that receive money from the BFI Film Fund must adhere to new diversity quotas from September, the BFI has announced today.

The BFI’s new three ticks assessment – designed to improve diversity of ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic background in the industry – requires applicants to demonstrate commitment across three areas of their production: on screen diversity, off-screen diversity and employment opportunities.

At least one ‘tick’ will be needed in two of the three areas for a project to be eligible for funding (full criteria and guidelines below).

Here are a few of the criteria and guidelines:

A2 DIVERSE LEAD CHARACTERS If at least 1 of the lead characters positively reflects diversity through ethnicity (BAME), disability, gender, sexual identity or people from a socially disadvantaged background

{…}

A3 PROMINENT ON SCREEN PORTRAYAL IN SUPPORTING & BACKGROUND CHARACTERS If at least 30% of the supporting and/or non-speaking characters positively reflect diversity through ethnicity (BAME) or national origins , disability, gender, sexual identity or people from a socially disadvantaged background.

{…}

B3 CREW At least 10% of the total crew are BAME; or 5% are disabled; or 40% are from a socially disadvantaged background; or if at least 30% are women; or, depending on the location of the production, we will also consider an otherwise demonstrable and reasonable ‘significant engagement’

{…}

C1 PAID INTERNS / EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES If the applicant production company engages one or more paid interns from a diverse background (specifically BAME or from a socially disadvantaged background) for no less than 6 months, from a programme such as Creative Access, or offers employment opportunities

Mr: for men, regardless of marital status.
Master: for young men and boys, especially in the UK.
Ms: for women, regardless of marital status.
Miss: usually for unmarried women, though also used by married female entertainers (e.g. actresses).
Mrs: for married women.

True, Tony. But women often reject Ms. because it sounds like Miss and is given a derogatory spin to put one in their place. Plus, a lot of people assume you’re unmarried and feel bad about that since you’re not living up to your womanly duties (per society).

I saw a comic awhile ago that just used M. as an alternative for everyone. I wish something like that would be an option.

Plus, I kinda hate how men get the stronger R while women get slithering S’s. But maybe that’s because I’ve heard it as an insult too many times.

Well, if they can find a cause for binge drinking and alcoholism, maybe we can yet find a cure for teetotalism. Since I don’t drink myself, I’ve always found it distinctly uncomfortable being around drinking/drunk individuals. Worse still is that far too many will not take a “no, I don’t drink” as an answer, no matter how often I’ve explained myself (not that I should have to), both when these individuals were sober and when they were not.

JAL:
My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply I approved of those honorifics in any way. If we can’t simply do away with honorifics, I’d rather we find a new alternative. Do you have any idea how the ‘M.’ in that comic would be pronounced?
As for the ‘R’ vs the ‘S’, now that I think about it, the former sounds more…active? Assertive? The latter seems almost passive. I may be thinking too much into it though.

Worse still is that far too many will not take a “no, I don’t drink” as an answer, no matter how often I’ve explained myself (not that I should have to), both when these individuals were sober and when they were not.

That’s on my personal bartending list of Things I Don’t Like. No pressuring people into drinking. If they say ‘no’, they mean ‘no’. No guilting them. No ostracizing them.

Another thing that irritates the hell out of me: men insisting upon buying a woman a drink after she says ‘no’. Again, she said ‘no’, and that’s what she means. Moreover, you may be the customer-and you may be trained to think you’re always right, despite the times when you aren’t-but she is also a customer, and I’m going to respect her wishes; even if you’re buying. I’ve had people flat out get mad that I refuse to make a drink for a woman after she’s said no. Sorry, but honoring her wish is more important to me.

Hey loungers! An old friend of mine wrote an article on Sociological Images that just got heavily referenced in an article for TV Guide. It is a piece about the GoT & female nudity. The comments over at TV Guide are all kinds of terrible. If anyone feels like heading over to see, http://www.tvguide.com/News/HBOs-Female-Nudity-1084026.aspx
–
Hugs to all that want them. Take care, friends!

JAL:
My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply I approved of those honorifics in any way. If we can’t simply do away with honorifics, I’d rather we find a new alternative. Do you have any idea how the ‘M.’ in that comic would be pronounced?

No need to apologize. I sadly don’t know how the M was pronounced and can’t find it now.

As for the ‘R’ vs the ‘S’, now that I think about it, the former sounds more…active? Assertive? The latter seems almost passive. I may be thinking too much into it though.

I doubt you’re thinking too much about it. I feel the same way. I’m sure there’s a linguist around here somewhere to help us. I once read an article about how Romeo as a name worked in Romeo & Juliet and how names in general do have an effect. I’m sure honorifics work the same way, why wouldn’t it?

I mean given how people discriminate based on gender, it makes me feel lesser anyway because I imagine it as a red flag for prospective employers ( for example) to just go “Oh, it’s a woman. An unmarried one who’ll be flighty, looking for a husband and having kids” I’d always pick M. in that case even with a feminine first name. Though, in principle, I can see wanting an honorific to single to people what pronouns to use in a friendlier setting. But then there’s have to be a gender neutral one as well.

Mixter, usually written in its abbreviated form Mx., is an uncommonly used English honorific for genderqueer. It is a gender neutral title used by few people and its use has yet to be made official in general, although Brighton and Hove city council in Sussex, England, voted in 2013 to allow its use on council forms

For 50 years, Raju the elephant was abused, held shackled in spiked chains and forced to live off scraps from passing tourists. All that changed when he was rescued last weekend by wildlife conservationists who said the animal cried when he was finally set free.

Wildlife SOS, a group established in 1995 to protect endangered wildlife in India, set out to rescue Raju on the night of July 2. Raju is around 50 years old and was likely captured as a baby and bought and sold many times over the course of his life. He was forced to work as a begging elephant in Allahabad. His legs were bound in spiked chains that made walking difficult and left him with chronic wounds. He was also beaten.

Wildlife SOS found out about Raju’s story through India’s Forestry Commission. When the group attempted to rescue Raju on the night of July 2 in the Uttar Pradesh region of India, his owner and mahout — an individual who rides elephants — apparently attempted to dismantle the effort with a standoff, Nikki Sharp, the executive director of Wildlife SOS-USA, told The Huffington Post Monday.

Raju’s captors layered tighter chains on him and attempted to confuse him by shouting commands, but their efforts proved futile. A team of 10 veterinarians and experts from Wildlife SOS along with 20 Forestry Commission officers and two policemen managed to rescue the abused elephant, according to the Mirror, a British tabloid.

“Raju was in chains 24 hours a day, an act of ­intolerable cruelty. The team were astounded to see tears roll down his face during the rescue,” Pooja Binepal, a spokesman for Wildlife SOS, said, per the Mirror. “It was incredibly emotional. We knew in our hearts he realized he was being freed. Elephants are majestic and highly intelligent animals. We can only imagine what torture the past half a century has been for him.”

As for The Guy, well, he always responds positively and promptly whenever I contact him. He has invited me to his home a couple of times, where we drank White Russians and sat and talked for a long time with a movie playing in the background. He doesn’t initiate though. I’m not sure the reason for that, but it makes me fear that he’s “just being nice” by talking to me and texting me and working out together, etc. He’s new to the area so maybe he’s just trying to make friends? I have all kinds of explanations besides ‘he’s interested in me”. I guess since I’m working on being more assertive in my personal life generally, I could just Use My Words at some point. As it is, ambiguity is okay with me. Still working through the last relationship crap. : /

That’s on my personal bartending list of Things I Don’t Like. No pressuring people into drinking. If they say ‘no’, they mean ‘no’. No guilting them. No ostracizing them.

Fortunately for me, I’m male, so I have no social conditioning against refusing these things, but it’s ridiculous nonetheless. I’ve often abandoned drinks on the table that friends and/or coworkers have insisted on purchasing for me despite my objections. Given how bad it is for me in non-sexual situations, I can only imagine how bad it is for women who are getting hit on.

Rachel Maddow did a segment on the Texas Attorney General who is taking campaign (governorship) money from the Koch brothers. Abbott is the guy who also said that keeping massive chemical storage facilities in the middle of populated areas is no problem, and, no, he doesn’t need to see more regulation. For good measure, to hell with transparency as well. The public doesn’t need to know where all those chemical storage facilities are.

For 10 minutes, it seemed like the shooting was everywhere in the South Chicago neighborhood.

It started when someone shot and wounded a couple, then two people fired at the shooter, then there was a chase and shots exchanged and a man sitting on a porch was hit. Responding officers kept cutting each other off on their radios as they reported other gunfire in the area late Sunday night and early Monday morning.

Then the heavy equipment rolled in: A helicopter and SUVs packed with lockers of rifles. SWAT teams in green coveralls patrolled the streets with uniformed officers.

It was just one of dozens of shooting scenes across Chicago over the long Fourth of July weekend. In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park. […]

Over the July 4th weekend, 82 people were shot in Chicago, 14 of them fatally.

*sigh* Nope, certainly no problem with guns in the U.S. This is all perfectly normal, because if the U.S. weren’t drowning in guns, you’d have people running around with fucking swords or something, or so I’ve been told.

Not quite sure how to respond to this article on sunscreen, sun exposure, and melanoma. The first part seems legit. But. Not sure what dual-sexuality in fish has to do with my probability of getting skin cancer later in life.

I hate it when people I introduce myself to ask whether I’m Miss or Mrs. They are asking to know how to address me, but they are also asking a personal question about something that is none of their business.

There’s also a ton of them garnered from science fiction, although I’m having the problem that there’s so damn many I can’t recall any specifically except the most recent one I’ve encountered (meioa, with an optional suffix indicating the gender of the person being addressed if you’re really sure you know what it is).

esteleth
I didn’t catch that glimpse. I was consoling a heavily upset kid at that time. Those are the moments her slight non-neurotypicalness surfaces. She gets really, really, really upset by TV shows and movies and then you need to watch everything to the end because she won’t calm down until the Happy End. I guess I can see it when we watch it the next time.

rq
Look at the main source they have: Natural News, your best choice for quack information. Also, Vit D3 can be consumed in nice small pills.

Gorgoh
Well, other people have told me that it gets better and that after a certain age the gender-conscious parenting bears fruit. Pre-and gradeschoolers are at an age where they’re trying to fit, to find out what roles there are and everybody and their dog tells them that if they identify as “girl” then these are the roles they can have. That’s why I refuse to shame them for liking even those things that I really deem crap. And I fight the denigration of “girly things” as crap as just another form of misogyny. Construction toys are not inherently superior to craft kits.

names
German had the same divide into unmarried and married women, but within the last 50 years the term for unmarried women mostly fell out of usage.
My parents still had teachers who were called “Fräulein XYZ”, because back then women obviously retired as teachers once they got married, so no matter what age, the women would be “Fräulein”. By now everybody is just “Frau XYZ”, equivalent to “Herr XYZ”.

I have been vaping for the last 18 months. I started thinking it would cut down the cost of smoking, thinking that I would still have the occasional real cigarette. I have not smoked one since I started. I had no intention of stopping to smoke, it just turned out to be much more pleasurable to vape. Best advice seems to be to start with a decent kit.

Yeah, the Miss-Mrs-Ms thing is annoying. Sure, it’s good that Ms is at least available on (most, not all) forms these days … but I still get people asking on the phone etc. “Is that Miss or Mrs.?” (though nobody actually complains out loud when I answer “Ms” – whatever they may think privately).
My usual solution in writing, at least, is to put down my name as Initials-Surname with no honorific at all.

I still remember at uni, seeing a list of students at the beginning of the year, with everyone listed as Mr. or Ms (all very fine) … except for the one woman who as it happened actually was married. So we had a list of names, Mr. Ms Mr. Ms … Ms Ms Mrs. Way to miss the point, administration, way to miss the point.

He doesn’t initiate though. I’m not sure the reason for that, but it makes me fear that he’s “just being nice” by talking to me and texting me and working out together, etc.

Would being afraid or insecure about seeming (or actually being) “pushy” be consistent with his apparent personality?

Not from what I can tell, but it is possible. He generally comes off fairly confident and outgoing. But, it’s worth considering.

–

Thinking about vaping. Does it work?

I have been vaping for the last 18 months. I started thinking it would cut down the cost of smoking, thinking that I would still have the occasional real cigarette. I have not smoked one since I started. I had no intention of stopping to smoke, it just turned out to be much more pleasurable to vape. Best advice seems to be to start with a decent kit.

I stopped at a vape shop near work last week and bought a kit. I have also bought cigarettes since, ha. I don’t find it as enjoyable as most people seem to, but I’m going to keep trying because it would be nice to not feel guilty for putting bad stuff in my body unnecessarily.

In Japanese, adding さん (san) to anyone’s name is a good, all-purpose honorific.

Seconded, chigau-san.

In general, there are other suffixes available to add some flavor, e.g. for people of authority -sensei (or does that only refer to higher competence? Or general academic rank?), or even more respectful forms of -san (-sama). Not sure about the more colloquial forms (-kun comes to mind), they seem to be gendered, right?

In any case, usage of -san would at least make the world sound more Bladerunner-y or Shadowrun-y or something, which would be awesome.

Original Sandi, ah alright that makes sense… well in that case good luck in putting up with the hierarchies!

Portia,

I got home and finally decided to spring for an account on Dating Site. What is the first dat-gum thing that the fucking thing does? Matches me with S at 98%.

Okay I have not clue what you’re talking about or why that is worthy of outrage. What is dat-gum? What or who is S?

Giliell,

And I fight the denigration of “girly things” as crap as just another form of misogyny.

That seems to be a valid point, I haven’t quite thought about it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. My first reply would be not to judge “things” (as in values, goals, dreams) by their stereotypical gender-shaping characteristics, but by some outside measure. Such a measure could be “inhowfar it motivates one/contributes to a motive to acquire skills that eventually enables one to lead a life according to good principles” or something similar (yeah I know this is rather verbose… hope you get my meaning)? From that vantage point, many female-gendered values (as associated with princesses and the like, such as “beauty”) might, in fact, get a bad rating after all.

Haven’t thought this through so and gotta run, will be happy to read any thoughts or criticisms.

On rightwing news this morning at lot of attention, all of it negative, was put on President Obama’s request for $3 billion-plus to handle the humanitarian crisis at the border (so many minors crossing the border that the system for processing/housing/caring for them is overwhelmed).

Congress does not want to spend money to take care of those children. They do, however, want to spend money to investigate Benghazi:

House Republicans are planning to spend as much as $3.3 million for this year’s operations of the special committee they created in May to investigate the September 2012 Benghazi attacks, a bigger budget than the House Veterans Affairs and Ethics committees were given this year.

According to a committee document provided by Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s office, House Republicans want a $3.3 million budget for this year’s operations of the 12-member select committee on the Benghazi attacks. As with most congressional committees, the document indicates the majority party gets the bigger share of the resources for the panel; the budget provides just under $2.2 million for Republicans and just over $1 million for Democrats on the committee.

The “investigation” of a tragic event that has already been investigated more than seven times is blatantly political. Yet, taxpayers are paying for this. The Republican National Committee is not paying for it.

Priorities are all fucked up here. There’s also the specter of Congress doing nothing, or nothing useful … and now they’re putting on a Benghazi circus.

Congressional Republicans are adding more staff for the Benghazi circus, more than the veterans affairs committee, and, they’re burning through more money too. The immigrant children? Back-burner that.

I hate doing this, but I’ve been slammed with two pets in need of medical care and it’s putting a strain on things. My own cat is sick with an intestinal parasite and my dad’s kitten (who I’ve ended up responsible for taking care of) is injured.

Portia, for several years (before I dropped the pretense that a 45-year-old feminist fat disabled woman with monstrous teeth* will find dates on a dating site), the top three matches – people mailed to me weekly as “DATE THIS PERSON THEY’RE AWESOME FOR YOU” – were my three most recent exes, including Her Ex-Cellency. She was rated at 99% compatible.

I’m like, yeah, I’m going to colour that one a “no”. Yes, we’re very compatible, no, we won’t be dating anymore.

Her Ex-Cellency just left, we’re meeting again tomorrow night to fill out the appeal form and strategize income enhancement. I need to organize myself in the ways that will lead to my having more income: make a good resume and get a police check, before going to community centres and offering to teach languages. Get an art website set up, to sell my paintings. Update my business website (currently five years out of date), and get it translated into my target languages (anyone wanna help me with backchecking on my non-native translation skills? German? French? Russian?). Start checking my work e-mail accounts again. Get my business cards and pamphlets distributed at frosh week through the foreign students association. Commission cards and web pages in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Arabic, my largest populations of foreign students for proofing work.

Look into writing-for-money opportunities (I have some vague abilities in writing humour, and gaming articles are in the works besides). See about hiring a business manager to help keep all this shit organized and moving, freeing me for the doing-the-money-making-activity part. Begin saving to get my certification exams, which would allow me to do medical and legal translations, by far the most common work (I have, for example, translated the personal income tax forms of Switzerland into English for a company – that subsequently ripped me off for payment, because they said it was no good because I wasn’t certified. Corporate headquarters in Bahrain, good luck suing for that one, Caitie). Begin designing some of the hundred-odd t-shirts I’ve made notes on. Write the movie with Craig, and seek funding to make it and pay ourselves to do it, both privately and from arts grants (if such a thing continues to exist in HarperJesusLand).

I’m quite sure that even in part-time hours, I could earn enough for me to live on, and also keep a part-time manager employed. Someone to do all the selling-of-me that I suck at, someone extroverted.

I got the coolest free app for my phone: Google Sky Map. Basically, hold up your phone, and it shows you what stars should be in the direction your pointing. It works up and down, as well as side to side; I keep turning it on to look at the stars on the nadir-side from my position (somewhere in the Indian Ocean, I believe, about a thousand miles west of Australia), through the planet. Very, very cool. Needs more features, but they’ll be coming, because Google. Includes a time-machine setting for a hundred years each way (accuracy becomes too poor at that point, especially for planets, because of gravitational disturbances of Jupiter, largely). Shows all the usual suspects, plus space stations/major satellites, and includes a ‘night mode’, where the information is presented in dark red on a black background, to help preserve night vision. SO COOL/VERY ASTRONOMY/FULL OF STARS.
* On my most recent visit to the dentist, back in January, I answered the question “How would you describe the condition of your teeth?” with “A wretched hive of scum and villainy,” knowing my dentist to be an sf fan. I was, of course, not kidding.

Retail giant Walmart has apologized for selling a home decoration poster of one of the Nazi’s most notorious concentration camps.

The poster on Walmart’s website featured the front gate of Dachau Concentration Camp, showing the inscription “Arbeit Macht Frei” — or “Work will make you free.” Tens of thousands of prisoners died in the forced labor camp.

Heeb magazine first reported on the existence of the posters. The Dachau posters were subsequently eviscerated by the satirical Wonkette blog.

“Sup, Walmart? Just sellin’ inspirational posters featuring the gates of Dachau and their famously inspiring motto “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work Makes You Free,” BECAUSE WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” Wonkette wrote.

Religious leaders in Kansas view the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision last week as an opportunity to revive legislation that would protect their “religious freedom” — measures that gay rights advocates warn would legitimize discrimination against LGBT people.

The Associated Press reported this weekend that social conservatives believe they have an opening to bring the state’s religious freedom bill back in 2015. The legislation failed this spring; it passed the House, but stalled in the Senate after significant backlash from business groups. It would have prevented businesses from being sued if they refused to serve LGBT people for religious reasons.

“We are not going to let it die. We are very committed,” Rev. Terry Fox, a leading Southern Baptist minister, told the AP. “The Body of Christ is a powerful movement when it comes together.” […]

So, do the conservative Supreme Court Justices know that their “narrow” ruling is an open door for anti-gay legislation? Do they know and just pretend otherwise? Are they secretly pleased? And how the hell did they get away with providing no legal argument to back up the “limited” part of their Hobby Lobby ruling — well, no argument other than “because I said so”?

A housing official in North Carolina is under investigation for Facebook posts targeting black people, illegal immigrants, and Democrats.

Malcolm “Mac” Butner refuses to step down from his appointed post as chairman of the Rowan County Housing Authority, and county commissioners say there’s not much they can do because the comments were made in his personal time.

The local chapter of the NAACP and other organizations have called for Butner’s termination after he made denigrating comments about blacks in a post in reference to a Moral Monday protest.

“Gee, they are all black,” Butner posted. “I guess the white folk could not get off because they were too busy working (and) being productive, good citizens.”

He also claimed liberals and Democrats “don’t have a principled bone in their body and they don’t care even if our constitutional republic is destroyed.”

“To hell with the lesbos, queers, liberals and baby killers,” he added.

So, do the conservative Supreme Court Justices know that their “narrow” ruling is an open door for anti-gay legislation?

Why do they focus on just the gays? Gays are hardly mentioned in the bible. And they are right up there with nonvirgin brides, disobedient children, apostates, atheists, false prophets, witches, sabbath breakers, and adulterers.

If they can discriminate against gays, why not nonxians, adulterers, atheists, heretics, witches, and their lengthy list of other hates?

And why are just xians allowed to discrimate based on religious beliefs?

Yeah, these are rhetorical questions. It’s either all discrimination all the time by anyone. Or none by no one. At least if they want to be intellectually consistent, not that they ever have been.

BC fixes a lot of problems such as abortion, poverty, and welfare costs. Each dollar the state spends on birth control saves it $3 on welfare payments.

I’m really uncomfortable with this line of argument, given that BC was developed in a eugenic climate and the racist anti-choicers are always trying to find ways to restrict WOC’s reproductive choices and their birth rate generally. (And who is stereotypically having babies and drawing welfare?) Especially since black women are still targeted like so.

Going to drop off a few thoughts on a FYI basis. Worth what you are paying for it.

The Nebraska judge said what I thought. This Supreme court has done more damage to the USA in a few years than we fixed in the last 50 years. They aren’t judges, they are right wing political hacks favoring the oligarchies and power hungry religious kooks. Data.

1. Gutting the voting rights act on the basis that racism is over. In fact, overt racism is making a huge comeback and attempts to take people’s votes away are common in Red states.

2. Hobby Lobby. Pretty much guts the First Amendment Freedom of Religion and favors anti-democratic christofascists. Attacking women is just icing on that cake.

Since the US is becoming economically unequal, that is just going to make it a lot worse. Unequal societies become unstable. Which is what is happening in the USA. They also sometimes collapse in revolutions i.e. French, Russian, etc.

The Supreme court has done enough to set the stage for huge problems a few decades down the road. And since they are old men, by the time it happens, they will be dead.

The betting is the Roberts court will be the most reversed court in history. But that will be decades down the road, if ever. And by that time…it won’t matter to me. I’ll be dead too.

My first reply would be not to judge “things” (as in values, goals, dreams) by their stereotypical gender-shaping characteristics, but by some outside measure. Such a measure could be “inhowfar it motivates one/contributes to a motive to acquire skills that eventually enables one to lead a life according to good principles” or something similar (yeah I know this is rather verbose… hope you get my meaning)? From that vantage point, many female-gendered values (as associated with princesses and the like, such as “beauty”) might, in fact, get a bad rating after all.

Both dynamics are at work – many things that are associated with femaleness tend to be considered crap irrespective of their actual value, because misogyny, and many things that are genuinely crap tend to be relegated to girls and women, also because misogyny. Not everyone reliably distinguishes recognizing the latter from engaging in the former, oddly enough.

Just had a friend on Facebook contest my statement that Republican politicians (and their party platform) are racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. His refutation? Democrats are just as bad. I laid out my argument-that the entire Republican Party’s platform, unlike the Democratic platform-contains homophobia, sexism, and racism. He came back with more of ‘democrats do the same thing’, as if he completely ignored my words. Josh (spokesgay) made several attempts to show my friend how wrong headed he was, but it was to no avail. He maintains that he always follows his gut and that his gut is always right. I ended the discussion by noting that where I used evidence and facts to back up my opinion, he brought neither to the discussion (and also pointed out that I do not respect his uninformed opinion on this subject).

****

On the flipside, another FB friend (S) commented on Pam Bondi’s (Florida’s AG) attempt to use the ‘marriage is for procreation’ argument to defend the ban on same sex marriage in Florida. I saw a commenter criticize her comments and refer to her as a c$nt. I responded to the article and commented that I wish people would stop using that word bc it’s sexist. S chimed in and said he doesn’t like using the word either. The guy who made the comment said he was sorry for using it and deleted the comment. I gave him my thanks, and reiterated that I agree with him that Pam Bondi is being an awful human being (and I gave him some fun alternative offensive words to use in the future). I was kinda happy.

So the guys have started messaging me on the dating site and I haven’t been as grossed out or weirded out as I expected. My favorite so far: “I moved to IA in April and friend is asking me where can he go to get a hand gun safety course would you know?” Um…on second thought, that’s a little creepy actually.

Well, after commenting yesterday my internet was promptly cut off. This was unexpected and I’m frantactically trying to get a hold of mom who may or may not be able to help. Her and husbad are homeless again and working on housing. They have no phone so I’m just sitting waiting for her to show up basically.

We had a plan. We. had. a. plan. For instance, help with rent due to Mom being disabled and money to buy a house through a VA loan.

But then, waiting and paperwork far beyond expecting gummed the works so they needed to use money to survive and couldn’t help us. Going through city funding for bill help didn’t work despite being there SO early for lines, they still ran out before me. We were also suppose to get a check for a very short temp job Roomie did but that was sent in the mail, with no showing yet.

Internet is off with $158 needed now and the next bill of $64 being due on the 12th. We have nothing for rent this month.

I’m trying so, so hard to do it. But nothing is working out and when things are delayed it’s disastrous. I don’t know what else to do. I know others need the help. I know I’ve asked for so much. I asked for the cup help weeks ago because I thought someone specifically offered to pay it so it wasn’t a big deal. Now everything went to ruins and I don’t know what else to do.

I can’t go to the library to use their internet because I have past due books from years ago from my fucked head ex so they won’t let me use their computers.

Roomie is at a job interview right now and we’re just crossing fingers that it works out. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what’ll happen to us. I’m trying to send an email to Portia and those I’ve emailed to send an SOS and get a number for someone because being disconnected from you guys completely scares me. Even if it’s not money help, I don’t want to be alone. And I feel so alone. I’m “borrowing” an unprotected wifi right now, so I hope this goes through.

Aaaand it disappeared. Crap. I’ll try again when it or another comes up or something. Please email me.

Hi there
I did have better days than this. There were also a lot worse ones, but still…
Today was a demonstration against the cuts in the university budget. The lecturer to my 2-4 class gave people the time off to go there. But I still had a class at 4 I couldn’t miss, because it’s the colloquium of the prof who supervises my thesis and we need to discuss things so I can start with my research over the break. Now, I’m not officially signed up for that class, so I probably didn’T get the email that this was cancelled, too.
Then I came home to find out that the little one is sick and that daycare had tried to phone me since 3:30 but my batteries had died…

Anne d.
That is beautiful. Do you have a mold for the bodies or such? I admit that I’d expected some needle-felting. Shows you how assumptions lead you astray

From your comment, here:“Another thing that irritates the hell out of me: men insisting upon buying a woman a drink after she says ‘no’. Again, she said ‘no’, and that’s what she means. Moreover, you may be the customer-and you may be trained to think you’re always right, despite the times when you aren’t-but she is also a customer, and I’m going to respect her wishes; even if you’re buying.”

(Later)
I read about the elephant.
This sort of shit is why people want to believe that, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there will be recompense for/punishment to fit the crime.

* On my most recent visit to the dentist, back in January, I answered the question “How would you describe the condition of your teeth?” with “A wretched hive of scum and villainy,” knowing my dentist to be an sf fan. I was, of course, not kidding.

*pointing ^*
See? Proof!
–raven:

I guess since they are non-American nonwhite children, they aren’t worth worrying about. These so called self proclaimed xians only care about their own money and their own power.

Giliell, cicely, thank you! The birds are sewn from regular old flat felt and stuffed. I signed up for an online class, um, last year, and I’m just now getting to it. There are basic patterns, but of course I had to modify them here and there, as one does.

Giliell, I hope your little one has something minor that passes through quickly. It’s so hard when they’re sick.

JAL, I hope things get straightened out for you quickly, you’ve really been piled on.

cicely quoting Tony:“Another thing that irritates the hell out of me: men insisting upon buying a woman a drink after she says ‘no’. Again, she said ‘no’, and that’s what she means. Moreover, you may be the customer-and you may be trained to think you’re always right, despite the times when you aren’t-but she is also a customer, and I’m going to respect her wishes; even if you’re buying.”
I kicked someone out of my life for doing that, because it triggered me terribly. (sobbing in the foyer of a nearby office building level trigger, which is not something I experience very often).
You’re one of the good ones, Tony

–

JAL
*hugs*
I’m here, thanks for emailing me.

–

One of my old friends keeps get all salty with me when I tell him I’m not laughing at his sexist “jokes” or I tell him that maybe I know more about my experience of being a woman than he knows about what my experience should be. I was hoping that given a second chance he could cut this shit out. But I guess not. Damnit. Holding on to your sexist indoctrination<friendship with me, so it's his loss.

So are you glued to the ceiling or just bouncing about on an anti-gravity pogo stick ?

Oh, if only I had an anti-gravity pogo stick!

No; The Husband took a carefully-hoarded collection of materials under the house—and over the cat-crap-infested clay-based mud, and through the spiders, and jacked up the most obviously broken no-longer-support. Now the floor is…leveler…and no longer bounces alarmingly when walked upon. And the washing machine may actually be sitting level!

There’s another main-something-essential (sorry, vocabulary banks have returned a “File Not Found” on the nomenclature search) that will have to be dealt with, once we’ve collected the next hoard of supplies.

After that comes the projected Collecting-Up Of Materials To Fix The Damned-Squirrel-Damaged Eaves.
-

That was…remarkable. When I tuned in late, having watched the end of a program I didn’t know was twenty minutes longer than I expected, I saw the score as 4-0, and thought, “Well, that’s gotta be a mistake, game’s not 30 minutes in!”

Then they scored the 5th, and the announcer says “And no mistake, that’s FIVE-NIL GERMANY, no, no error, no mistake, FIVE-NIL.”

And if they hadn’t taken their foot off the gas, I’d not have been surprised to see them hit 10. Schuerrle’s second (7-0!) was outstanding.

I saw the score as 4-0, and thought, “Well, that’s gotta be a mistake, game’s not 30 minutes in!”

Quite.

The Brazilians somehow got a goal within the last 4 minutes, and the 2 minutes of extension didn’t change that, so the result is 7:1, one of the highest and most baffling scores since the adoption of the current rules.

In the last few years, I’ve been speaking up more and more about feminism. Not just here, but random sites I see on the Internet. Sometimes I participate in a thread for a while (such as the recent discussion over at Think Progress that I brought up), other times I leave one comment and don’t return.
I left a comment here at a blog called ‘Change From Within’. The blogger, Jamie Utt wrote a post about 10 things men can do to combat sexist entitlement in public. I haven’t gone back to the site until today, to dig up my comment.
I did *that* because I had the most unexpected message on Facebook. This message was from a woman whom I did not know. She said she came across my comment on Jamie’s blog and wanted to thank me for speaking up about women’s rights; especially since I’m a man doing that. She expected the responses to the blog post to be the typical misogynist and sexist rantings you see after posts about feminism, but was pleasantly surprised to read my comment. She gave me two of the best compliments I’ve ever heard: she told me I made a difference to a complete stranger on the net, and that I was her hero of the day.

I think most people here know that I don’t speak up to get cookies, or recognition. I speak up bc it’s the right thing to do, and I don’t want to give silent consent to the sexism and misogyny that permeate society. I certainly don’t do anything in an attempt to be any hero. I think it’s basic human decency to defend the rights of women.

Tony, I think there’s a difference here, and it’s a nuance that I think means you get to have your cookies and enjoy them too.

You’re not doing it for the cookies. You do it anyway, whether the cookies arrive or not. You do it all over the place, and you don’t often tell people that you do. And you put a lot of energy out, and you do so despite that, being a gay man, the odds of there being an intimate relative/partner who is a woman and would benefit from your activity are smaller (i.e., you’re not “doing it for the sex”, as MRAs are wont to suggest feminist men are doing).

So when a cookie arrives anyway? I think it’s fair enough to enjoy it, if you feel confident in your motives (and I think you do, and should, IMO).

And I think saying so here isn’t bad either. I want my friends to know when someone says something nice to me, to be able to share the moments that bring me happiness.

That’s my take, anyway. And I happen to agree with her, which I always take as a sign of wisdom in other people. Because that’s just how I roll.

“Do not give religiously affiliated employers a license to discriminate against LGBT people when they have no such right to discriminate based on race, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information,” the group say in a joint statement just released. “Religiously affiliated organizations are allowed to make hiring decisions based on their religion, but nothing in federal law authorizes discrimination by those organizations based on any other protected characteristic, and the rule should be the same for sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Religious organizations are free to choose their ministers or faith leaders, and adding protections for sexual orientation and gender identity or expression will not change that.”

I’ve got mixed feelings on the withdrawal of support for ENDA. In the wake of Hobby Lobby, it’s not likely to be anywhere near as effective as it should be. But it still seems like it will be a step forward. A small one, but still better than what we’ve got now.

Am I missing something, or are these groups insisting on a big step forward or nothing? Refusing to accept a small step?

Also, I’m not linking because it’s a horrible place, but is anyone familiar with Return of Kings? Is this some sort of parody site or are they just unusually straightforward in their douchebaggery?

They’re withdrawing support because ENDA contains religious exemptions. Religious organizations are already seeking to be exempt from federal anti-discrimination laws, based on their “deeply held beliefs”. If religion can be used to avoid following the law, there are companies who will take advantage of that. I agree with the companies who have withdrawn their support of ENDA. No religious exemptions. It leads to discrimination and bigotry. In the wake of last week’s SCOTUS decision to side with Hobby Lobby, I think they have a valid concern.

After 40 years, the LGBT community in part has decided that not only is ENDA not good enough, it’s potentially dangerous because the legislation contains strong carve outs for religious organizations. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling, ENDA could become a license to discriminate rather than the legal protection it was designed to be.

The first success of the environmental movements of the 1960s was to save the whale. Now, with deep irony, whales may be about to save us with their poo. A new scientific report from the University of Vermont, which gathers together several decades of research, shows that the great whales which nearly became extinct in the 20th century – and are now recovering in number due to the 1983 ban on whaling – may be the enablers of massive carbon sinks via their prodigious production of faeces.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/08/whale-poo-reverse-climate-change

Gorogh, you may be unaware of the origins of the name which has a royal and ancient history. Alexandra (née Audley) was formerly Darkheart by nym. There has thus been, at the appropriate time in each case, a certain DarkFoetus (or DarkFetus, as some people will persist in spelling it ;-) ), subsequently DarkBaby and now DarkToddler.

There is also a truly stunning blanket of DarkDuckies made for her by the amazing Inaji, which is awesome to behold; their number includes a ZombieDucky, a VampireDucky, a PirateDucky and other duckies whose names for the moment escape me.

Perhaps someone will be kind enough to link the pic.

Aye, that be me. And DarkToddler.

It still blows my ever-lovin’ mind that she’s over a year and a half now. Walking and talking! She knows colors and is starting to count. It was just yesterday that she was a helpless little bean at my breast and tomorrow she’ll be off to college. *sniff!*

I can’t find the post I’m looking for, but here’s the progress of the quilt. As beautiful as the pics are, they really DO NOT give the finished piece justice.

Situation normal here at Casa la Pelirroja. Worked on end of month bills from the time I got home. Finally done, planovers on the the table—and the Redhead can’t wake up. Seems the spray anti-pain/antiseptic I brought home earlier today is doing its job. She’s comfortable enough to sleep. Sigh.

Biblical epics are all the rage right now, but the first ‘Exodus‘ trailer, previewing Christian Bale‘s turn as Moses, reinforces how unique and unexpected this film adaptation will be.
To the delight of Batman fans everywhere, Christian Bale is our savior, portraying Moses as he seeks to free the Israelites in ancient Egypt. (In case you didn’t know, Bale previously portrayed Jesus Christ, so this is another check mark on his Biblical bucket list.) Joel Edgerton portrays the villainous Pharaoh Ramses, who seeks to maintain his tyrannical hold over the slaves.
If Bale wasn’t enough to pique your interest, how about Ridley Scott at the helm? Or perhaps even supporting cast members Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, Sigourney Weaver and John Turturro? In any case, there’s enough promise that this film could be better than ‘Noah’ and ‘Son of God.’
In addition to the ‘Exodus’ trailer, three new posters have debuted (shown below), though the footage looks more enticing. ‘Exodus’ (officially titled ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’) debuts December 12.

I hate football
Better said, I hate football fans. It was half past twelve before I could even think about trying to sleep because of noise. And now I have a long day ahead with a bit more than 5 hours of sleep.

Not sure if anyone has checked it out, but Jenny Trout does The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch where she reviews each episode in order with a critical eye. She is a fan of the show, but that doesn’t stop her from criticizing problematic issues. She is strongly critical of Joss Whedon and has convinced me he’s not the great male feminist that many (including myself) thought he was, nor is the show the bastion of feminism that some claim it is. She opens each review with some witty snark, and a list of recurring ideas (some good, some awful):

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.

Tony!
I’d say that list is pretty spot-on, although I’m not certain about “All the monsters look like wieners.” Also, while “Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light” is definitely true, I don’t consider that to be a flaw of the show at all.

chigau:
I still don’t understand why she has that on the list. So far, her reviews have only gotten up to the two parter that introduced Kendra. I think she’s taken a short break. In any case, I am curious to see why she feels Harmony is a strong female character. I’m betting she has a good reason(s).

****

Dalillama:
For the most part, I agree with you, but I think there are some benefits to team sports. Those benefits are just all but invisible in our sports culture. It’s all about the money, the fame, god, and power. I’d prefer it if sports were merely a way of being athletic, honing skills, developing teamwork, that kinda thing.

*grmpf*
Talk about whining
My first class today was cancelled.
Which I could have known if Yahoo had allowed me to check my mail.
Since it didn’t I drove 50kn return for nothing.
And I got an email in which the person told me a lot of things I already knew except for the fucking place and time I had asked for…

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show. Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.

“How bona to vada your dolly old eek” may sound like gibberish, but it is in fact a warm greeting often used by gay men in England between the 1930s and early 1970s. It literally means: “How good to see your lovely/pleasant face,” and is a delightful example of the secret language Polari.

Polari comes from the Italian word “pralare” meaning “to talk” and is a mixture of Lingua Franca, Yiddish, Italian, Cockney, and slang and was a common language used by circus performers, actors, sailors, criminals, and prostitutes in the UK and Ireland from the late 16th century on. In the 1930s, Polari became the secret language for gay men to gossip in public, cruise for partners and identify one another. Polari fell out of use in the late sixties, after the UK government decriminalized homosexuality in 1967. It also fell out of favor with the more politically correct gay liberationists who saw Polari as an outdated and unhelpful stratagem.

For a U.S. Senate race in a competitive swing state, Iowa’s Joni Ernst is a remarkably far-right Republican candidate. As Rachel noted on the show last month, Ernst has said she would ban abortions and many forms of birth control; she would privatize Social Security and abolish the minimum wage; she would back an anti-gay amendment to the Constitution; and she believes there’s secret information that Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction. […]

I wrote a letter to EdenOrganic, a company that wants to use the SCOTUS decision to keep its female employees from having access to contraception through their health insurance. Their response?

“Eden Foods is a principled food company. We were convinced that actions of the federal government were illegal, and so filed a formal objection. The recent Supreme Court decision confirms, at least in part, that we were correct. We realized in making our objection that it would give rise to grotesque mischaracterizations and fallacious arguments. Nevertheless, we believe we did what we should have.”
This is such a non-response. It did not address anything I brought up in my email. I addressed the nature of contraception, defined abortion, and quoted what their owner, Michael Potter, has said about contraception. I didn’t really expect to get a response. I certainly didn’t think I’d get something this vapid.

The thugs to keep their heads up theirs, so I suppose it is necessary to shove an eye in there as well to see (as opposed to smell) what else they are doing. So yeah, now I understand how one could loose multiple eyes…

I’ve been a lot more tolerant of paper wasps, anyway, since I saw one flying past my eggplants with a cankerworm in its jaws.

Yes, it is Very Helpful for the wasps to infest the eggplants with cankerworms. Saves you the trouble of having to incinerate that part of the garden to get rid of those foul weeds before planting something edible.

Moments of Mormon Madness: history is not really history, and changing the unchanging dogma categories.

Mormon leaders have been trying mightily to stop a deluge of mostly internet-born facts that destroy mormon dogma. One of their main efforts includes sponsoring essays that supposedly explain away some of the worst of the ahistorical crap and the most damning of the racist dogma. For example, the leaders threw Brigham Young under the bus. They blamed him for all the past racist dogma aimed at people with dark skin. Apparently, Brigham was “speaking as a man” and not as a prophet when he claimed god-given revelation on the subject.

Mormon leaders have now tackled one of the thorniest problems, namely that Joseph Smith’s “translation” of Egyptian papyri to come up with the “Book of Abraham” is completely bogus. The attempt to make this all okay is just hilarious.

A new online essay by the LDS Church says its Book of Abraham is inspired scripture but perhaps not a literal word-for-word translation of ancient Egyptian papyrus scrolls by the faith’s founder, Joseph Smith.

The article says it is possible that the papyri merely served as a catalyst for revelation by Smith that led to his expanding on the biblical account of Abraham. The book is included in a church volume of scripture called The Pearl of Great Price.

But the essay also outlines how it is possible that the book was a literal translation, but concedes that is impossible to prove or disprove now since most of the papyri used have long since vanished and are presumed destroyed. The paper adds that while scholars say existing papyrus fragments don’t match anything in the book, it says lost parts could.

“The veracity and value of the Book of Abraham cannot be settled by scholarly debate concerning the book’s translation and historicity,” the article says. “The book’s status as scripture lies in the eternal truths it teaches and the powerful spirit it conveys.” […]

The essay concludes that the truth of the Book of Abraham can be found only through study, prayer and confirmation of the holy spirit. […]

The “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham” essay comes on the heels of other recent postings designed to help Latter-day Saints and others better understand sometimes-sticky theological or historical issues in Mormonism.

Other essays include explorations of the faith’s former ban on blacks from entering its all-male priesthood, its long-discarded practice of plural marriage and its teachings about the nature of God and mankind’s eternal potential.

Ogvorbis, I can certainly understand the urge to use a thug as a toilet. Problem is, that’s a waste of good shite, besides placing a sensitive part of one’s anatomy rather close to something that is likely to stick unpleasant (or at least unwanted / uninvited) things into it, and then call you an “elitist” for using them as toilets, accompanied by a lecture on how the 99% are too lazy to do anything useful, like put the shite to good use. (And the solution is to disenfranchise wimmin and others who don’t know their place or don’t vote thug, and lower the taxes on the 1%, which can only be afforded by cutting services used mostly by the 99%, except when owned / provided by religious persons (corporations) owned by the 1%.)

As for the discussion up-thread about my eyes, and my having lost possibly three eyes from my optical system: yes, I am a many-eyed creature. How do you think I have been perusing all of these news sources? I partition my brain much like a hard disk and then assign a few (or many) optical organs to view different sources.

I can afford to lose a few “eyes” but I have to say the degradation of the entire system is possible if I view too many rightwing whackadoodle dandies per day.

Here’s a followup to comment #156: a few readers comments associated with the Salt Lake Tribune article.

We have the papyrus Joseph Smith claimed was written by the hand of Abraham. The Mormon church has had it since 1966 and has kept it safely out of sight.

The papyrus has been translated by actual Egyptologists and it has been found to be a common copy of The Book of Breathings — funeral texts. The name Abraham does not appear once on the papyrus.
————-
Two of the Egyptologist that examined and translated the original papyri were from BYU. The Church promptly excommunicated them.
————
hese essays are not written for those that already know religion is a farce. They are written as a lifeline to those that want to believe. It doesn’t even matter what they say, in the mind of a believer the question has been answered. It doesn’t matter what the answer actually is.
—————–
Here’s how Smith described it:

“A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.”

Now the Church is saying it’s not necessarily an actual translation. So the Church is lying.
————-
The foreknowledge of God knows the abject lack of common sense which is so prevalent today among the mockers and stoners of reality. The Prophet Stephen was stoned for merely teaching the truth as provided by God. The Prophet Joseph Smith sealed his testimony with his blood after witnessing that God and Jesus Christ are two different persons, which grates at the ears of the unlearned and unwashed. […]

I’m very happy I belong to the One True Church that is not afraid to teach the truth form God’s Scriptures which cannot be mocked without consequence. […]

Had to include at least one True Believing Mormon comment at the end there.

Oklahoma has lots of problems that can be traced to the fundamentalist religious beliefs of it many of its residents. Fundamentalist mormons are in the process of adding to Oklahoma’s whackadoodle burden.

On the Oklahoma Panhandle, the land that made the covered wagon famous, some new settlers have arrived.

They are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. More important, they are the FLDS subset belonging to the United Order — people still in good standing with Warren Jeffs and loyal to him.

The FLDS have been buying homes and property near Boise City, Okla., according to the Guymon Daily Herald and CBS affiliate News Channel 10. […]

“Indications are that they’re authorized to be there by the church, and they’re still loyal to Warren,” said Sam Brower, the Utah private investigator who wrote a book about Jeffs and monitors the FLDS.

[…] In a telephone interview with me Saturday, Brower said Boise City residents started noticing the plainly dressed men and prairie dress-clad women a few months ago. About that time, Brower said, he started noticing trailers with Oklahoma plates arriving in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

Brower also pointed out the Oklahoma Construction Industries Board website now lists six men named Barlow as being licensed electricians, though their cities of business are listed as Hildale or Colorado City. […]

This is a followup to comment #162: information culled from the readers comments.

A Utah corporation owned by the Mormon Church filed documents in Pawhuska Tuesday taking possession of at least three ranch properties in Osage County operated by Oklahoma Land and Cattle Co. Another church-connected entity, Osage Hills Ranches, filed deeds in Sedan, Kan., Tuesday taking possession of Oklahoma Land and Cattle property in Chautauqua County, north of Osage County.

The transactions involve 50,000-70,000 acres of prime pastureland owned by descendants of the renowned Oklahoma oil man, the late K.S. “Boots” Adams, sources indicated. At current land values, the transactions would be worth between $10 million and $14 million, they said.

Sources in Pawhuska said Mormon representatives and Oklahoma Land and Cattle, as well as other Osage County landowners, were still negotiating possible additional purchases.

Representatives of the Mormon Church and of one of its business entities Wednesday confirmed the church’s commercial arm had bought ranch holdings of Oklahoma Land and Cattle. They said the church intended to continue operating the land as ranches.
————-
There is plenty of economic impact this will have on the area. Rise in food stamps for that area for example.

The FLDS do know how to work, but it has a cost. It’s basically slave labor with mental shackles. I was one for a very long time. To use FLDS crews is to support slavery. Some or most of these slaves don’t even realize they are slaves.

The other problem they will face is the same thing southern Utah has faced for years. The FLDS slave wage and low bid hold down the market. They take most the money and pass it up the chain. Most of it leaves the state and less of it circulates here locally. These are thing that residents of Bosie will need to consider before using FLDS contractors.

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I bought the Darkling a bunch of new little toys (including a knock-off My Little Pony that looks like the ones I had as a kid), I downloaded some new music (pop, mostly. Old Ones help me; she likes Katy Perry). I’ve got paper towels and trash bags and snacks (dried fruit, animal crackers, Goldfish, and cereal). I have places to stop along the way.

Didn’t realize til just now that I had a big green bruise on my bicep from climbing out a window during fire training last night. My boss was like “What’d you do to your arm…” It was a really good training last night, very fun. I did a lot of new things and challenged myself a lot. It was practicing all the dramatic stuff you see on Chicago Fire – pulling a firefighter out of a basement through a hole in the floor, busting through doors and walls, and climbing in and out of windows in weird positions. Fun fun.

From Texas comes this decidedly odd view of President Obama’s attempts to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants who are minors:

According to [Texas Republican congressional nominee Larry Smith], Barack Obama’s handling of the child refugee crisis along the Mexican border suggests the president is suffering from Münchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare psychological condition that causes caretakers to abuse kids.

“Today, we hear of reports that children are being abused, being used by drug cartels, and even dying,” Smith said in a statement on his website last Thursday. “If a high school administrator prompted such mass abuse, that person would quickly be without a job and perhaps even found behind bars. The mental stability of the school administrator would be in question. Is a President of the United States who does such horrific acts deserving of less scrutiny and accountability?…People who intentionally hurt children for attention can be accused of Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy.”

And here’s the same dude enlightening us regarding Muslims. The comment is directed to a Muslim-American woman:

If the majority of Muslims are peace-loving then as a well traveled man I should have met one by now. […] From my experiences overseas to watching, listening, and reading from numerous sources I have come to a conclusion: you are not a muslim.

CaitieCat:
I didn’t think your request was unreasonable. I’ve asked Ophelia to elaborate as to the reason for her response, bc it boggles my mind. She’s always presented as someone who wants a more diverse movement, so clearly she understand the importance of not ignoring marginalized people.

I tend to stick my landings, though, so I doubt I’ll be going back. Given her long history of being okay with some pretty TERFy comments, I think the chances of her apologizing and/or in any way acknowledging a problem are twofold: slim, and fat.

And in the end, knowing who the transphobes are just makes my reading list shorter, so I’ll go find someone who doesn’t prefer not to acknowledge that I exist, and give them my eyeballs on their ad-bearing posts. *shrug* I don’t much give a rat’s arse whether a transphobe respects me or not, and it is useful to know your enemy.

Yeah. I didn’t read there often, but fuckall, I’m disappointed in her. Apparently it wouldn’t be surprising to me had I been paying attention, though. Such horseshit, and she didn’t respond to perfectly polite™ requests for elaboration and clarification on her position.

opposablethumbs:
I’m really, really disappointed in Ophelia about this, bc I had a high opinion of her. To not even understand the meaning behind the words CaitieCat used boggles my mind. Between you, carlie, and myself, it’s clear that her words were quite comprehensible.

I’m not very “out there” with my progressive beliefs or atheism on the site, so it’s not totally unfair. I do have “Very Liberal” on there though. So. I dunno. His says conservative, but also that he’s an EMT. So maybe he thinks having emergency services in common can overcome different belief systems ^_^

This is random and out of the blue — I’ve been reading Pharyngula for years but was most recently active back when it was on ScienceBlogs. I hope the lounge is the right place for this.

CaitieCat, getaway driver: I might know of some work for you (on the basis of your profile). I’m not the one who ultimately decides, but I can send you the information. Please email me if you’re interested, mikizane@gmail.com. I couldn’t find direct contact info on your blog.

who the hell has the shamelessness to put that they require whiteness in a partner? wtf?

The same type of person who-on gay dating sites-puts “not interested in fems, queens, or blacks”. I’ve seen that far too often. I didn’t pick up on the subtle racism there for years. While I haven’t even been on a dating site in nearly a year, I did tweak my profiles to indicate what my *preferences* are, rather than the type of people I wasn’t looking for. It may be subtle, but saying “I’m primarily attracted to white or hispanic men” sounds much better to my mind than saying what I *don’t* like.

This reminds me of an interaction I had years ago, when I lived in Alabama. I was in my early to mid 20s, long before I had any of the social awareness that I have now. I was approached while I was at a local gay bar-the Vieux Carre. The guy was hitting on me, and when he asked my type, I told him I’m usually attracted to white men. He then accused me of racism bc I wasn’t attracted to him. I discounted it at the time, bc I cannot control my attraction to people. But as I’ve become more aware, I wonder if the racism in society hasn’t affected me on some deeper level than I thought. What is the nature of attraction? Can we change who we’re attracted to? Is there some social component to the type of people we’re attracted to? Why am I attracted to different men now, at 39 than I was at 21? What factors influenced the change in attraction? Why do peoples’ values and opinions mean more to me than they used to-to the extent that even if you’re hot, you still have to be a good person?

Tony – IMHO and in my reading, ironchew’s disproportionately determined to drag it that way. I think it’s up to y’all’s discretion how to handle it, but personally I’m going to stay away from there for now, that’s all.

The label on the bag from the pantry (for the nonce, on the table beside the ‘puter) reads (‘mongst other stuff) “Jumbo Idaho Potatoes”. In fine print, it says “Distributed by The Kroger Company”, a massive chain of grocery (and other) stores in the US. Nowhere do I find any hint of who actually made the label. Sorry. Þ

The bag, of course, is an attempt, weak though it may be, to control the potatoes.

Portia:
I haven’t been back since I left my second comment. I don’t know if it would be worth it. CaitieCat made a very simple suggestion. One that seems like it would be so easy to incorporate. I really expected Ophelia to say something like “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that before. I appreciate you bringing that to my attention.” Instead, she doubles down on advice to not ignore marginalized people? Glad I don’t have heroes.

Oh, I’d love some Mexican, but somebody ordered pork roast with garlic mashed potatoes, cauliflower, and gravy. And probably a piece of strawberry/rhubarb pie for desert. Then I get to freeze the pie so her dad can enjoy it too….

I was in moderation, which I expected given that I don’t comment at Butterflies and Wheels very often. Then I was out. Then I was back in, and the last comment that I made never posted, the thing that said “Your comment is awaiting moderation” just disappeared. Is there an explanation besides “the blog owner deleted your comment instead of releasing it from moderation”? I really don’t want it to be that.

But if we’re making vodka from those potatoes, we’re gonna need some new labels. Someone needs to get on that, I think.

I don’t know which labels you have in mind. Is it the label that goes on the end of the still’s condenser, that reads “Mouth goes here”? Or is it the one that goes on the face, saying “Insert hose here”?

Actually, her friend who organized Monday’s Mah Jongg session brought the strawberry/rhubarb pie to reward me for my efforts organizing the session. Except I hate rhubarb in anything food/wine. It does have a nice flower, and we have a couple of plants at the side of the house.
I also admit to purchasing some prepared foods on occasion. Like tonight, the garlic potatoes are commercial. But the roast, cauliflower, and gravy are (will be, as the roast has another 45 minutes minumum) freshly prepared. The fresh veggie cycle on on the microwave will cook the cut up cauliflower.

“ATTENTION LIBERALS: do NOT look at this picture. Your head will most likely explode,” Fisher wrote in a tweet along with the photo.

It wasn’t long before commenters on Reddit noticed that Fisher’s photo was similar to a photo of a Gaza suicide bomber known as the “White Widow,” who was seen holding an assault rifle and a Koran.

“I expected less backlash with this than I did the first one because the picture is, like, America’s founding principles,” Fischer opined to Fox News on Wednesday. “That’s all that’s in the picture. And I really didn’t think it would cause the uproar that it has.”

Fisher said that she posted the photo because there was a “growing intolerance among the left, and conservatives are becoming more and more afraid to speak up.”

I want to speak to the irresponsibility of Monday’s Daily Mail report. I seldom respond to tabloids, unless it involves someone else and their safety or well being. The Daily Mail has printed a completely fabricated story about my fiancée’s mother opposing our marriage for religious reasons. It says Amal’s mother has been telling “half of Beirut” that she’s against the wedding. It says they joke about traditions in the Druze religion that end up with the death of the bride.

Let me repeat that: the death of the bride.

First of all, none of the story is factually true. Amal’s mother is not Druze. She has not been to Beirut since Amal and I have been dating, and she is in no way against the marriage — but none of that is the issue. I’m, of course, used to the Daily Mail making up stories — they do it several times a week — and I don’t care. If they fabricate stories of Amal being pregnant, or that the marriage will take place on the set of Downton Abbey, or that I’m running for office, or any number of idiotic stories that they sit at their computers and invent, I don’t care.

But this lie involves larger issues. The irresponsibility, in this day and age, to exploit religious differences where none exist, is at the very least negligent and more appropriately dangerous. We have family members all over the world, and the idea that someone would inflame any part of that world for the sole reason of selling papers should be criminal.

*hugs* for CaitieCat.
You did not deserve such mistreatment.
–Crip Cyke!*hug-with-optional-and-selectable-degrees-of-pounciness*
Wormhole research….
….possibly you could use it to travel backwards in time, and tweak the ever-livin’ shit outa SCOTUS? ‘Cause we’ve got a majority malfunction.
–
So, are y’all saying that potatoes are Lords of Chaos?
–Nerd, you do realize that you are awesome, yes?
If not…be told.
-

se habla espol
I think a nice clear label on the bottle saying “potato vodka” or something equally creative would be a good start. But then, I’m of the good opinion that most potential imbibers would know which bits to stick where for best results. *shrug* Any ideas?

CaitieCat
I’ve just had a chance to go over to Ophelia’s, and… damn. I’m sad because I enjoyed her blogging most of the time, but the fact that she can’t acknowledge your desire to not be erased is unacceptable. Please accept my warmest *hugs*. :(

Portia
*general hugs* :)

Nerd
I realize cicely has more or less already said it, but someone has to say it straight up: you are awesome.
That is all.

Vance County Sheriff Deputies were called to the home of 84-year-old Lloyd Woodlief late Monday night. A family argument had turned violent, Vance County Sheriff Peter White said, leading Lloyd Woodlief to shoot his 49-year-old son, Lloyd Peyton Woodlief, with a .22 caliber pistol.

Authorities said that they believe the unnamed 11-year-old then shot his grandfather with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Many years ago, but not so many that things were better, the mainstream view about women’s health in the US was made clear to me by two conversations with doctors, one a gynecologist and the other a urologist.

Gynecologist to my wife: If you get pregnant with another baby, you will probably die. Also, there is an 80% chance you will have uterine cancer within one year.
My wife: When can I schedule for a hysterectomy?
Gynecologist: I’m not willing to do that. You might want more children.

After being refused by several doctors, we went to a urologist.
Me: I want to have a vasectomy. Getting pregnant would put my wife in serious danger.
Him: Are you sure you’re not going to leave her for someone younger who could have children?

Once I had a vasectomy, it was suddenly no problem to find a willing surgeon for my wife.

I swear, one day I’ll get the hang of social media. By that time it will have evolved into something completely new and I’ll have to adjust to that. I just created a Tumblr account. Scratch that. I just found out that I already had one and forgot about it. In any case, I left a comment at The Mary Sue, and saw that I had a notification by my name. Having no idea what that was, I clicked it, and saw a very long list of responses to various comments I’ve left at various blogs and news sites over, well, I have no idea how long. Sheesh.

“Today, we hear of reports that children are being abused, being used by drug cartels, and even dying,”

I guess that means he’s all in favour of receiving those children with open arm, giving them a home, clothing and feeding them properly and giving them a good education, allowing them a life without abuse, right?
He has also established lavish funding for this, right?

+++

So, if we distill Lynna, OM, we can get vodka?

It means that the essence of Lynna, OM is a clear spirit. I always knew she was made of different stuff

+++Caitie
*hugs*
Ophelia has an unfortunate tendency to react badly to such critique. Not meant to excuse it, it’s just and unfortunate tendency.

+++Portia

His says conservative, but also that he’s an EMT. So maybe he thinks having emergency services in common can overcome different belief systems

The nasty part of my mind says he doesn’t think that women actually have opinions.

+++ CD!
*pouncehug*
U B OK?

+++

Nerd

I also admit to purchasing some prepared foods on occasion. Like tonight, the garlic potatoes are commercial.

Hey, go easy on yourself!
I will admit that your food-talk generally makes my mouth water, but you’re doing a hell of a job anyway. You go to work, you care for the Redhead, I think that most people with that workload would live of frozen pizza and canned soup and i wouldn’t blame them

+++
Yay for Clooney saying some sensible words. By now I’m garteful every time a prominent white man opens his mouth and I don’t cringe. To be pleased is a rare event indeed.

+++

miki z
Welcome to teh Lounge and holy fuck, such people should not be allowed to practise

+++
Me, I’m cranky
I have one of these depressive bouts when my childhood fuck up is triggered by a few smallish misfortunes making me believe that I can’t do nothing right and everything I do is going to fail and I’m a bad person anyway. I need to consciously make myself aware of things that go well, like that mock exam that actually went quite well. This helps from spiralling deeper and putting food out for the black dog

+++
And in my crancy mood I have decided that pro-GMO and anti-GMO are equally bad, both believing in a religion and accusing the other side of killing the world while ignoring sensible issues raised in favour and against…

Sorry, I’ve been away for a while, playing host to a canine of a darker hue. My daughter is getting better now. It looks like a bad cold rather than the pneumonia we’ve had in the past. Hopefully the booster shot she had has had it’s effect. Only time will tell.

CD tentative *pouncehug* if that’s not a contradiction in terms. Great to see you back.

Nerd you are good people.

Caitie I’m with you on the B&W blog post. What you said looks perfectly reasonable and polite.

Giliell Sorry to hear that the black dog is visiting you too. I hope it’s brief.

”Free Birth Control Reduces Pregnancy Rate” (and the rate of abortions) . Teen births fell by 40% !http://www.vox.com/2014/7/7/5877505/colorado-contraceptives-teen-pregnancy-birth-control
“This initiative has saved Colorado millions of dollars,” Governor John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “But more importantly, it has helped thousands of young Colorado women continue their education, pursue their professional goals and postpone pregnancy until they are ready to start a family.”
— — — — —

My sympathies to the Horders currently hosting the black dog (even though I always wish this idiom referenced something other than dogs, just because I’m a bit of a dog nut; yes I know it’s just an idiom and a trad one at that. But slugs! It feels more like a black slug) who is also spending a lot of time at my place. Me, I am one of the poster people for “oh what a pity, they had all that potential and so many opportunities, how on earth did they manage to fuck up as pathetically as they have”.

I don’t wanna spoil it, but basically it’s David Attenborough narrating an absolute tearjerker of a story about a hunter and a wolf.

When I wasn’t trying to hold back the tears I was wondering how this story hasn’t been made into a movie since way back in the 60s. I know I’d go to see a modern movie about it and I’d come out of the theater crying like a baby.

It looks as if I may have literally given my older son headaches.
He had a headache yesterday with aura, the aura being one-sided numbness, some weakness, possibly visual disturbances and trouble reading/articulating words; the headache persisted considerably longer than the aura. (I was not at home when he was having aura symptoms, or we might have gone to the ER). I also have a history of headache with one-sided numbness; my mother also used to have bad headaches, though I haven’t asked her about aura yet. So there is a possibility that this is familial hemiplegic migraine. We plan to ask his doctor about it when he has his physical.
I feel a bit guilty about this, though I suppose there’s no reason I should.

Me, I’m cranky
I have one of these depressive bouts when my childhood fuck up is triggered by a few smallish misfortunes making me believe that I can’t do nothing right and everything I do is going to fail and I’m a bad person anyway

You have my sympathy. My childhood failures fave been right up there in the front of my mind all week. And I keep apologizing to everyone so the black dog is strong.

Sorry I’m not capable of spending time here right now, but just quickly want to address a few replies. Btw if you want to hear an interesting piece about a Fox News anchor’s obtuseness, check out this (a friend of mine just sent me the link).

Portia @63, thanks for the info, although it leaves me with the question of which linguistic processes were at work making “goddamn” to “dat-gum”. Must look that up sometime.

Azkyroth @80,

Both dynamics are at work – many things that are associated with femaleness tend to be considered crap irrespective of their actual value, because misogyny, and many things that are genuinely crap tend to be relegated to girls and women, also because misogyny. Not everyone reliably distinguishes recognizing the latter from engaging in the former, oddly enough.

I can only partially follow you *scratches head* can you elaborate on the last sentence?

Alexandra @120, well nice to meet you! Can’t say anything about your child-rearing experience (can’t even keep plants alive), but I’m convinced many a Pharyngulites’ children will turn out to be awesome individuals. Good luck anyways.

I hear you on the dhildhood failures thing – I can remember a whole lot of things I did wrong as a child, but damn all I did right. Possibly because my father was quick to remind me when he thought I’d done something wrong…

I don’t have a black dog, more of a big black cloud of fug that descends, surrounds my head and weighs heavily on my shoulders. I’m going to try work on my last two felt birds today after I do the shopping errands, that might help lift the damn thing.

[refills plate of virtual treats (0 calories, if you care, and anything you fancy), checks tea supply and puts out some pretty plates and napkins just for the heck of it] Hey, I’m a hellgoddess, I can magic these things.

Well, now that you all have discovered my russet secret, I guess I don’t have to hide anymore. Being a potato is revered here. We even have a “Spud Parade” during “Spud Days” every autumn. I don’t participate because I don’t want to put all the other spuds to shame.

Naturally, Pharyngulites, upon discovering my starchy magnificence, set about distilling me. I always wanted to be consumed by the Horde. This is a dream come true. I am you.

In other news, lots of right-wingers were singing Putin’s praises not long ago. He was anti-gay, he conquered other countries, he rode horses shirtless. Putin is a bit of a goofball, and now his goofiness is getting even more people killed.

[…] now that he’s sown chaos in Ukraine—but uneager to participate in someone else’s civil war—President Vladimir Putin has thrown the rebels under the bus. In June, rebel leader Igor Strelkov said that “Putin betrayed us,” and that betrayal has only deepened as Kiev launched its all-out offensive last week. Moscow, having started all this, has offered no help to the rebels.

The betrayal, it seems, may be even nastier than that. According to a Ukrainian security council spokesman, the Russians have sealed their border, shutting down three key crossings. Not only are they not letting men and materiel into Ukraine from Russia, but they’re also blocking men and materiel from flowing in the opposite direction. That is, the very men that Moscow has riled up to the extent that they have taken up arms and are ready to die in order to get the region out of Ukraine and into Russia are not welcome to seek refuge in Russia. (Not even, it seems, the ones originally from Russia.) A group of 300 fleeing rebels reportedly even came under fire by the Russians as they tried to escape into Russia. […]

My sister had just had her second child, and had already been told that she stood a 50% chance of dying if she had another—so she told the doctor she wanted a hysterectomy—like, while they had her opened up anyway. Which was refused on the grounds that…
1) she and her husband might one day divorce, and;
2) her potential future husband might want children.
–*hugs* for Giliell.
The black dog is not a companionable beast. At all.
–*hugs* also for bassmike. And best wishes for your daughter.
–birgerjohansson:

“But more importantly, it has helped thousands of young Colorado women continue their education, pursue their professional goals and postpone pregnancy until they are ready to start a family.”

Which is exactly where conservatives find fault with it—they just cover it with religion-sauce to try to make it more palatable.
–ledasmom, I know how you feel! I gave Son his ADD, shortness, and knees of questionable durability. Not what I’d’ve chosen for him.
And yet, he is Awesomeness Incarnate.
(In my completely unbiased opinion.)
–
My “black dog” manifests as a sucking (dually-defined) black vortex.
When it is in operation, I circle the drain at its center.
-

opposablethumbs, I get what you say about the Black Dog image, and I’m totally onside, because I am Dog People all the way and back again. My biggest regret right now is that I don’t have a dog, and can’t afford one, because I think an actual dog would keep the Black Dog away. Having someone to care for is always helpful, I find, in fighting off my depression. I can find energy for someone else’s needs that I cannot find for my own.

But that shadowy companion…I also just like the imagery. I sometimes imagine myself walking alone through a dark, rainy city, just me, the pavement, and the rain, followed by the Dog. And in some ways, I find it emotionally useful to externalize the depression, it’s a lot easier to fight against something outside me than inside me, somehow.

My sister had just had her second child, and had already been told that she stood a 50% chance of dying if she had another—so she told the doctor she wanted a hysterectomy—like, while they had her opened up anyway. Which was refused on the grounds that…
1) she and her husband might one day divorce, and;
2) her potential future husband might want children.

Nevermind that she said she doesn’t want any more children, eh? ::Flips the bird at that doctor::

****

Somehow I have missed the potato conversation. I like potatoes. Russet, gold, red. They are of the good. I like to haz them fried, baked, browned hashly, in cubes, as fries and well, pretty much any way imaginable. I do not like sweet potatoes. They can join the peas in the MDP’s belly.

Laverne Cox has become a household name, and her nomination today for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black makes her the first openly-transgender actress to be nominated for an Emmy — but it is just one more achievement in an impressive list.

Rest easy, be assured that Todd Akin is no longer sorry he made that “legitimate rape” comment. Whew. That was a close one. I thought a fundgelical political whackadoodle had learned something. Not so. Good deal. I don’t want my world rocked by old white men learning something. /sarcasm

We’ve known for some time that as Republicans become more highly educated, or better at general science comprehension, they become stronger in their global warming denial. It’s a phenomenon I’ve called the “smart idiot” effect: Apparently being highly informed or capable interacts with preexisting political biases to make those on the right more likely to be wrong than they would be if they had less education or knowledge.

Now, a new study in the journal Climatic Change has identified a closely related phenomenon. Call it the “rich idiot” effect: The study finds that among Republicans, as levels of income increase, so does their likelihood of “dismissing the dangers associated with climate change.” But among Democrats and independents, there is little or no change in climate views as levels of income increase or decrease.

So a Springfield MO police officer approached a homeless guy who had some warrants. Ok, makes sense, guy has warrants you try to arrest him.

This man was unarmed and fled immediately. Officer pulls his gun and shoots the suspect.

Officers excuse? “I thought I pulled my TASER”.

Charge? 3rd Degree Assault, a misdemeanor which not only would leave his gun possession rights intact, but will even allow him to remain as a police officer.

This is the 7th time ever, anywhere, that the TASER manufacturer has ever heard of this sort of mistake. This certainly doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened more, but as many cops as there are out there carrying both, if it was anything resembling a common mistake, I’d expect them to have a lot more on record.

The officer has recently qualified on his handgun, and has used his TASER to stop suspects before. He’s not some rookie who’s had limited time with each in his hand.

I’m expecting the News-Leader will have a full update on the situation soon, I’ve seen this much from one of their reporters twitter feeds.

More or less. A final. Getting sick. Depression. Partner starts job a ferry away, making me a single parent for 3 days a week, all simultaneous-to-sequential. Plus still fretting very hard about money. I can be a great writer when I’m writing persuasively about some idea or another. I can be a good writer when I’m writing informationally. But trying to put together my book proposal so I can finally publish this thing requires that I tell other people I’m awesome and my book will sell tons – which I somehow just can’t find a way to express in industry-standard format. It feels weird and yucky to hype myself. I love hyping things I care about. And if that effort, that writing makes a difference to people, I’m ecstatic. If it results in compliments, I’m flattered. But **seeking** that attention for me and not just some idea or information? That’s hard. That’s really hard. That’s among the hardest stuff I ever do. But I have to do it if I want any money to come in during law school, when my attention and family aren’t letting me work a regular job. Ugh.

Too many people in Utah simply can not get a clue when it comes to marriage equality. They’re headed for the Supreme Court.

[…] Utah will go to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge a federal appeals court’s ruling that upheld same-sex marriage, calling state bans on such unions unconstitutional.

Wednesday was Utah’s deadline to seek a full-court review by all 12 judges on the 10th Circuit bench, also known as an en banc review.

But, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office, the state will instead push onward to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“To obtain clarity and resolution from the highest court, the Utah Attorney General’s Office will not seek en banc review of the Kitchen v. Herbert Tenth Circuit decision, but will file a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United State Supreme Court in the coming weeks,” the attorney general’s office wrote in a statement. “Attorney General Sean Reyes has a sworn duty to defend the laws of our state. Utah’s Constitutional Amendment 3 is presumed to be constitutional unless the highest court deems otherwise.” […]

More Republican dumbfuckery, this time in reference to the conditions in which undocumented immigrants are being held:

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) on Wednesday downplayed the horrible conditions in U.S. Border Patrol detention centers by describing all of the supposed benefits undocumented immigrants are receiving there.

“They belong back with their families. When you look at the lovely way they’re getting treated — they’re getting free health care, free housing, you know, they’re watching the World Cup on big screen TVs,” he said on Sean Hannity’s radio show […]

However, photos of the detention centers show immigrants crammed together sitting on cement floors and benches, and locked up in holding cells. […]

After trips to a detention centers in Arizona and Texas, LA Times reporters Molly Hennesy-Fiske and Cindy Carcamo said the facilities were “crammed,” “unsanitary” and “reeked of sweat.”

Neugebauer said that undocumented immigrants came to the U.S. partially due to the fantastic detention centers. […]

So, this afternoon I’m taking 2 kids, both ID as girls, to a comic book shop. It’s the first time for the older, the younger has only tagged along with me once before. This time the intent is to get them their own books.

Both are under 12. One’s a strong reader, one’s got a decent vocabulary for her age, but is only just beginning to read full sentences on her own. Both like art and pictures. Both have experienced graphic novels through the school library.

There’s some interest in super-heroes. But I don’t want to limit them to that. I can’t get them Mouse Guard, cause that’s really a more adult book, however cute the drawings are. Bone might work, but that’s some of Jeff’s older work. I Kill Giants I have and wouldn’t want the kids to read b/c of the serious themes. Plus I’d like to get something current. I want the kids to have a regular experience getting something new and reading it. I can’t do that with two $15-20 graphic novels per visit, so I’m hoping to get each a single issue of a current book on each visit.

The girls have expressed interest in Wonder Woman (Kids: “Do you think that they have Wonder Woman?” Me: “Well, I don’t know. It’s possible.” [giggles under breath]) But the writers of WW have such an inconsistent track record, sometimes embracing her as a feminist icon, sometimes writing her as anti-feminist because they think it will somehow shrink their market to have a strong woman that also thinks that woman should succeed or fail based on their strengths and not others’ thoughts about their strengths. It’s maddening, but true. Drives me nuts. While nearly all women supers have had bad, anti-feminist writers at times, it seems like the visibility of WW makes DC regularly engage in intentional backlash-periods that others books seem to avoid. So I’m worried – Is WW currently in a good phase or a bad phase?

What comic books should I point these children towards? Supes and non-super recommendations are both welcomed.

Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane — known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter — has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home. […]

Now there’s some fat that Republicans could trim. But, no, they back this kind of government spending. To be fair, some of the support for the F-35 II Lightning is bipartisan, but I think we could change that if we didn’t have Tea Party pushback in the House of Congress. The cost of the project, and the cost over-runs, are astronomical — almost like funding another war.

[…] the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a mess almost since its inception, with massive cost overruns leading to its current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion — an increase of $7.4 billion since last year. That breaks down to costing about $49 billion per year since work began in 2006 and the project is seven years behind schedule. Over its life-cycle, estimated at about 55 years, operating and maintaining the F-35 fleet will cost the U.S. a little over $1 trillion. […]

Crip Dyke:
Wonder Woman has been written by Brian Azzarello since the reboot in 2011. I haven’t bought a DC comic since then, but I still keep track of events. While everything I’ve read indicates that WW is quite good (one of the best DC has put out in years), I don’t think WW is a kid friendly book. Here is an interview with Azzarello about the book.

A lot of those jobs are second-earners in the family. A lot of them are first time workers, it’s the first job they’ve ever had. A minimum wage job is where you learn to get to work on time. It’s where you learn the great feeling at the end of getting that paycheck and knowing you gave an honest week’s work. It’s where you learn the social aspect of work, where you play on a softball team or go for a beer after work. We want to foster that and incentivize work in this country.

That’s former Republican National Chairman Ed Gillespie ® speaking. Gillespie is his party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in Virginia. Minimum wage workers get to play softball! All is right with the world.

I would recommend Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan is the first Muslim superhero with her own book, and it has been getting fantastic reviews).
Also, Kelly Sue Deconnick is rocking it on Captain Marvel (with Carol Danvers in the title role). It just started the second volume after the first one wrapped up last year. Deconnick gets my vote for one of Marvel’s best writers (she wrote two issues of Supergirl before the DC reboot that made me adore her writing).

A Mother Jones article written by Chris Mooney about all the Emmy nods Cosmos got describes it as by “Seth MacFarlane, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and company”. Anne Druyan isn’t mentioned at all in the piece except as an Emmy nominee as a writer, never mind that she was the main creator and writer of the thing, not to mention an executive producer and director.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Actually, I think it’s entirely possible that SCOTUS will deny cert. They aren’t eager to rule on this, and they won’t be pleased that Utah deliberately bypassed a time-tested tactic for delaying a hot-button issue. Utah’s predicament being the result of local incompetence on the part of appellant and a reluctance to avail themselves of short-of-scotus avenues for relief in a 10th circuit that is far from the most liberal in the nation (in politics and jurisprudence, even if adjacent to it geographically) will NOT endear them or their cause to the high court.

Furthermore, the federal courts are pretty unanimous in striking down marriage inequality. The courts are much more likely to grant cert when there is disagreement between the circuits. Admittedly, there is a hard-core conservative contingent that wants to overturn these lower decisions, but they don’t have a majority. The bare majority that found stood with the 9th circuit on Prop 8’s unconstitutionality isn’t eager to take a huge, national political fall for a cause that’s being consistently won anyway.

So what you’ll likely have is some conservatives voting to grant cert to put as much pressure on the Prop8 majority as early as possible when they would rather wait. That may be enough to get the case heard (it only requires 4 justices to hear a case, not 5). But the Prop8 majority can always rule on something other than marriage equality itself (Prop8 was found to be a special case because marriage rights existed and were taken away – because the AG failed to file for a stay, marriage rights in Utah could be said to be analogous…and thus the same majority could just find nothing new save that the Prop8 decision stands).

Remember that Loving v Virginia was decided after a large majority of states already had removed race from marriage laws. It only brought a minority of states into line with the majority. I strongly suspect that you’ll see the same thing with SCOTUS on queer marriage equality. How soon that will happen, I’m not sure. I once predicted, based on the timeline between the first state ruling finding a right to marry regardless of race (California) and the Loving decision that we should expect a national decision not earlier than 2015, no later than 2030, and probably closest to 2020. All this based on the first state decision on queer marriage being in Hawaii in 1993 with final resolution in 1999 (which created a choice of years to start the timeline) The “no earlier than 2015″ is now guaranteed to hold up. The trend in lower courts and state-by-state change makes “after 2030″ seem unreasonably pessimistic. But I’m a little concerned that the rate things are happening we might actually get a SCOTUS ruling by 2017 which will confound my “rounds off to 2020″ prediction.

I won’t weep if that happens. But I seriously doubt that SCOTUS is going to do anything other than brush Utah off as easily as it can. When it does rule nationally, it will likely want to rule when both parties have brought their best cases. Utah clearly hasn’t been doing that.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

The only current books I’m buying are Ms Marvel and Captain Marvel. I love ‘em both. Not that I wouldn’t have trusted your recommendations, Tony, but everyone’s tastes are different. This just goes to show that your recommendations are both good generally AND good for me specifically.

PS, is anyone else here familiar with this great adaptation? What was even better? My kids didn’t know the Rapunzel myth at all – this was their first exposure to it. So now when they get the bog-standard version, they’ll be all, bwhuh? Rapunzel kicks ass! What’s with this stupid story?

For the past week or so, I and a colleague have been trying to puzzle out WTF was going on with a certain “stack” of components on several of our systems: Several layers of software interacting with roughly three layers of hardware. Each system has a somewhat different stack (or “implementation”). Basically, when you asked the hardware to do AB it did AB — which is correct — but make a minor and seemingly-innocuous but reasonable change to either the software or hardware, and suddenly it would do BA, or a few cases, XY.

Yesterday, we finally proved a suspicion we had since almost the beginning, that the documentation on one hardware layer was wrong. It said the hardware did the intended AB, but really it did BA, except in one specific case where it really was AB. This fact was hidden by one of the software layers, which contained a “kludge” to prevent the BA problem (for one stack implementation in some but not all cases), but that kludge broke other stack implementations. Those other implementations responded by yet other kludges in other hardware layers. Which, in turn, broke one of the other software layers, which responded by yet another kludge, which (this is starting to sound like a groundhog day) broke yet another software layer, which therefore had a kludge to undo the effects of some of the previous kludges.

And today I finally worked a comprehensive theory to explain why each change caused a BA or even the odd XY, and — the kitemark of a decent theory — successfully predicted the results of not one, but two, hithertofore untested cases. Plus, my theory identifies the kludges (as well as explaining how they interact).

I’m so happy I fink I’ll go out for dinner tonight!

(Next step is to basically nuke all the kludges, and then re-implement, in the correct parts of the stack, the two which are actually needed…)

I wonder – and this is pure speculation – how Ms. Cox’s race plays into the adulation she’s (rightfully!) receiving for her acting and activism.

I mean, it’s kind of remarkable, when the population of trans POC is perhaps the most vulnerable of us all – the murder rate of trans POC exceeds that of the worst country in the world – that Ms. Cox should be quite literally the cover girl/poster child of trans-ness. I want it to be because she’s awesome.

But I wonder sometimes if it’s easier for white culture to take her as an acceptable face of transness because she’s already safely Other, by her Blackness. That is, she’s less threatening to white masculinity, because she can symnbolically emasculate the Scary Black Man, and since she’s Black, also safely say nothing in their minds about white masculinity.

Pure speculation, and I point out I’m mentioning it in no way to denigrate her success. She’s worked hard, probably ten times as hard as cis white actors, to achieve her very deserved fame and fortune, and I love having her as our public face right now (way better than, ugh, RuPaul). I’m more wondering why it is that in a US that continues to largely baulk at rendering us eligible for human rights protection in any way has such an easy time celebrating Ms. Cox. Obviously, her conventional beauty and performance of femininity goes a long way, but that’s a basic entry requirement for the field, and there are plenty of very beautiful, very publicly-feminine trans women who don’t get this kind of response.

I got there by thinking about the fact that of the really famous US-based men who crossdressed publicly, the majority are/were Black men: Flip Wilson, RuPaul, Martin Lawrence, vs. Divine (who also was Other by virtue of being fat) and Eddie Izzard (off the radar outside the left in the US, and not himself USan), despite Black people being a smaller part of the population. I’m sure there are others, absolutely (For The Google Tells Me So).

To be explicit, that’s an extended FYI musing aimed at no one in particular. Since trans awareness seems to be a slightly charged issue around here in some places (LOL).

Those doctors who know better than their patients… Wow. Just… wow. I guess I was damn lucky when I wanted my tubes tied – Husband had already looked into a vasectomy but wasn’t a candidate for the easier office procedure, so I had major surgery instead. I guess since he’d already expressed an interest in No More Kids, my doctor wasn’t as inclined to argue.

Todd Akin is now and has always been an asshat. I am so not surprised. Yet another man who knows better than us mere females how the female body operates.

I’m caught up. All I can do is leave more hugs and good wishes. Help yourselves.

The doctors refusing to sterilize women thing is a major issue. I know a number of women who’ve experienced it personally. Society will not let go of the idea that women are primarily in existence for making more boys.

As despicable, and dangerous, as the conservative justices’ ruling is, and it is extremely dangerous, the silver lining is the very premise of incorporation has been dismantled and corporate owners can no longer claim they are separate entities apart from their corporations. They have the conservatives on the Supreme Court to thank for the gift, and it is undeniably a gift they did not want.

I wonder – and this is pure speculation – how Ms. Cox’s race plays into the adulation she’s (rightfully!) receiving for her acting and activism.

I mean, it’s kind of remarkable, when the population of trans POC is perhaps the most vulnerable of us all – the murder rate of trans POC exceeds that of the worst country in the world – that Ms. Cox should be quite literally the cover girl/poster child of trans-ness. I want it to be because she’s awesome.

But I wonder sometimes if it’s easier for white culture to take her as an acceptable face of transness because she’s already safely Other, by her Blackness. That is, she’s less threatening to white masculinity, because she can symnbolically emasculate the Scary Black Man, and since she’s Black, also safely say nothing in their minds about white masculinity.

I think I see what you’re getting at: if Laverne Cox were white, it might be difficult for white culture to accept her bc she would look like them.

The suspect, who has not yet been identified, is believed to be the biological father of some of the children and the adoptive father to the others, Click2Houston.com reports.

Harris County Constable Ron Hickman said the incident appeared to be a “domestic situation gone south,” and that it may have involved a divorce or separation.

Police say three children and two adults were dead at the scene. Two wounded children, ages 4 and 15, were taken to the hospital, where the 4-year-old later died, KTRK reported.

KHOU says the survivor, a 15-year-old girl, told police the suspect was on his way to another location to kill more people.

She remains in critical condition, but police were able to use her information to intercept the suspect’s car, leading to a 25-minute chase before authorities disabled his vehicle using rumble stripes, the Houston Chronicle reports.

You wouldn’t leave a colleague waiting in front of an empty locked house after her fligth in, while you stayed after work for coffee. Right?

Not knowingly, willingly, and while possessed of rational capacity, no.
I take it that someone has recently treated you to this incivility and disrespect?
3)

I feel like a sack of shit.

Feelings also can lie.
You are not a sack of shit.
You are not shit in any sort of packaging.

Hmmmm….

Not in a box, not with a fox.
Not in a cup, not with a pup.
Not in a tree, not with a bee.
You are not full of shit at all,
The way I sees ‘em’s
What I call.

*hastily exiting, stage right, pursued by Things*

(One and Two, that is.)
–Tony!:

Nevermind that she said she doesn’t want any more children, eh? ::Flips the bird at that doctor::

Or that whole “risk of dying” thing.
Maybe it’s just me, but I categorize that under “Undesirable Possible Outcomes—To Be Avoided”.

I join you in consigning sweet potatoes to pea-dom…with the sole exception of the way my best friend does them. Brown sugar, heavy pecanization…yum! Accept no substitutes!
–gworroll:

I’m expecting the News-Leader will have a full update on the situation soon, I’ve seen this much from one of their reporters twitter feeds.

I’ll keep an eye out at the KY3 site (since my computer Does Not Like the News-Leader, for some reason).
Is it this one?
–Crip Dyke, I gave up on DC years ago, partly due to the very phenomenon of which you speak.
Not that Marvel is exactly immune, but Ms. Marvel seems to be going okay.
–CaitieCat:

I’m more wondering why it is that in a US that continues to largely baulk at rendering us eligible for human rights protection in any way has such an easy time celebrating Ms. Cox.

When you put it into the context of WOC being sterilized against their will, it sort of broadens the whole issue into a new sick perspective. They’re regulating who can reproduce and who must be prevented from reproducing and who must be prevented from preventing reproduction.

CaitieCat, my FiL was one of those “make more boys” asshats – Husband and I both only ever wanted two kids, we had two girls, and FiL started mouthing off about when was I going to give Husband some sons to carry on the family name. In front of the daughters, who fortunately were too young to notice.

I was too shocked and also too shy to do more than say “Girls can carry on the family name too!”. The joke was on FiL, though – all three of his precious sons produced only daughters, so there.

Yes, Tony, as ever, you find a way to say in thirty words what took me three thousand. :)

That article I found pointing out the history of Black men crossdressing for ‘comedy’ was eye-opening, and gave me a lot more names (Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy, David Alan Grier, and several others that my med-addled brain has now lost again), and certainly made me think there’s an element in operation there.

I don’t think I’d raise it in a larger forum, because I don’t want to even inadvertently tarnish Ms. Cox’ bright moment, or diminish her responsibility and agency in achieving it, but I hope it’s okay to talk it out here, and of course I’ll stop immediately if anyone thinks it isn’t, because Lounge.

I wonder if it’s a sort of benevolent racism, in the same sense as benevolent sexism (so-called ‘putting women on a pedestal’), involved in making it okay for the white public to celebrate her as she deserves? “It’s okay because I don’t have to worry about my white son wanting to emulate her”?

Am I too cynical? Is the world just changed enough that there’s now room for a trans WOC to be a major celebrity, and I’m seeing racism where it isn’t? I’d like to believe that, but my own history as a trans woman argues against it, and I don’t know whether that’s leading me to a form of confirmation bias.

Again, apologies if this is not appropriate for here, and I’ll stop if it’s bothering anyone.

Yes, Tony, as ever, you find a way to say in thirty words what took me three thousand. :)

I must be having an off day then, because I’m not well acquainted with concise :)

Looking at your link (I didn’t go through every comedian, as it became repetitious fast), it seems like many of them cross dressed for comedic effect. I wonder if there’s some racism and misogyny at play here. “We (white people) will accept black actors if they are in comedies, where we can laugh at them. We’ll even accept black actors cross dressing in comedies bc we can have twice the laughs.”

Of course, I’m not sure how that would link to the success of Laverne Cox.

Mildly ‘rupt, have a headache from the noise of maintenance downstairs doing something to the recently vacated apartment involving lots of hammering.
General *hugs*miki z
Welcome in, and also boo for asshole doctors.Giliell, Ogvorbis
*hugs*gorogh
God-damn becomes Dod-Gam by swapping the initial sounds to avoid blasphemy (the euphemism developed in a time/place where this is important), becomes Dad-Gum by a quick vowel shift to actual English words, and some dialects pronounce and write this as Dat-gum.Beatrice
I’m not sure if you’re the one who was left or the one having coffee, but either way you’re not alone; I’ve been on both ends of analogous situations, and they suck all ’round. *hugs*Ogvorbis 254
Makes me think of another Hitchhiker line:
“We’re going into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”

“Ask a glass of water.”

Tony!
While I’m glad to hear of her Emmy nomination, and it’s totally deserved, I want to know who the hell classified that series as a comedy.gworrol

Officers excuse? “I thought I pulled my TASER”.

I call total bullshit on that. A police sidearm weighs just under 2 lbs. A Taser weighs just over 1/2 lb. If you don’t notice that the thing you’re holding weighs 4 times what it should…CD
Yes, Rapunzel’s Revenge is a nifty book.

So, Loungers. I’ve got a large bag of fava beans in my fridge that is calling my name. Any suggestions on what I should do with them? I want a good work/result ratio (last time I worked too hard for the mediocre outcome).

CaitieCat
I don’t have a whole lot to add to those musings myself, but here’s a very interesting interview with Cox and her twin brother M. Lamar. (Who actually appeared briefly in Orange is the New Black as Sophia before her transition)

Dalillama, thank you, that was brilliant, and by the woman herself, and definitely makes me think I’m not throwing a gear thinking there’s probably something there.

Also, it makes me feel a lot better about that scene, because it’s one of the reasons I don’t actually watch OITNB.

One, being sent to prison (particularly the wrong prison, which thankfully this time isn’t) has been a serious daily nightmare of mine for many years, so the show as a whole was triggering somewhat (also, there is a jail experience in my past, related to my leaving the military unwillingly, which I won’t expand on because it was horrific and would not be at all Lounge-suitable).

Two, I hate hate HATE the trope that you can’t have a trans woman in a show without showing her ‘old self’. I hate that. It’s kept me from wanting to become known as an author since I transitioned, and why I am in some ways lucky to have grown up and transitioned when I did – as things started to thaw, but before the Internet made everyone’s entire lives permanently accessible. I am glad that this turns out to have been her brother, and not her, though. The idea of her having to do drag like that for a trope I loathe was really unpleasant for me – it may not have been for her, of course, but these are my reasons for not watching, not hers for making it. :)

Three, there was a sexual assualt/objectification plotline of Ms Cox’ character that started around E3 that made me turn off the show, and I’ve not gone back. It just hits too many hot buttons from my past. It’s a terrific show, with some flaws, and I’m not saying their queer/trans stories are one of those flaws, but they’re not something I could look past and still enjoy. My response to GRR Martin’s work is pretty similar. I don’t expect anyone else to have the same reactions to either, of course. :)

I like Scarlet Johansson. I think her performance as the Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the Avengers was amazing. I’m sure she’ll do a good job in her upcoming movie ‘Lucy’. But from what the preview shows, Hollywood is still intent on pushing the stupid meme that humans only use 10% of our brains, and if you unlock the other 90%, who knows what will happen?

The Vassar Concerned Citizens Committee organized an informational meeting Wednesday about a possible plan by Wolverine Human Services to house up to 120 teenage boys from Central America in the eastern Michigan town.

The Gross Pointe Park-based social services agency is negotiating a contract with Heartland Alliance, a Chicago anti-poverty organization, to allow the teens to stay for up to four weeks in Vassar, where they would receive medical care and basic education as their cases are heard in immigration court.

[…]

One Vassar resident suggested militarizing the border.

“I support a minefield along the border,” said Terry Mocny, a Marine Corps veteran who said he supported legal immigration.

He suggested sending the undocumented children to the now-closed Standish Maximum Correctional Facility.

Another man, who claimed he was “allergic to bullsh*t” and walked out on comments from a Wolverine official, wore a surgeon’s mask around his neck to symbolize his concerns about germs.

“I fear within two years of letting these immigrants in, these masks will become standard,” said Tom Ratcliff, of Kingston, who volunteered to drive busloads of immigrant children back to the border.

Yet another speaker insisted he didn’t hate children.

“I’m not here because I am some redneck rube from a small town in the Michigan Thumb,” said resident Lou Smallwood. “I’m not here because I’m a racist. I’m not here because I’m an old white guy. I’m here because I’m concerned about the federal government, and I’m concerned for my grandchildren and their future.

“I’m not racist, but I don’t want any of those kids from Central and South America coming here, bc reasons.”

Illinois State University recently announced that it would be relabeling several of its single-stall “family” restrooms on campus as “all-gender” restrooms. Though the decision won’t alter the functionality of any of the restrooms, the move is meant to accommodate transgender and gender-variant students, who often face harassment and even violence in public restrooms. All-gender restrooms will be identified by a new sign that “will include a symbol of a half of a man and half of a woman.”

I’m glad to see that all gender bathrooms aren’t causing confusion to some people.
I’m also glad to see FOX “news” in a panic bc people don’t share their bigotry.
I don’t, however, like the sign-half man and half woman? Ye gods that’s offensive.

Hey, SEGA, I was already going to play this game but thanks for sucking up. We’ve previously expressed our excitement for Alien: Isolation, the game in which you get to play as Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, and fight xenomorphs just like dear old ma.

So are you ready for this? There are two, yes TWO, pre-order bonus content allowing you to play as Ripley herself complete with voice and likeness of the one and only Sigourney Weaver. But that’s not all, Bob! Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), and Yaphet Kotto (Parker) will all be reprising their roles as well. Ian Holm’s likeness will be used but unfortunately will be voiced by a sound-alike. And here’s what that will look like…
[…]
Alien: Isolation will be available from October 7, 2014, for Xbox One the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, Windows PC, Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system.

This is a followup to Tony’s comment #287. News reports are not identifying the victims or the shooter as mormons, but ex-mormons have identified the victims as definitely being True Believing Mormons. The father of the slain children, Stephen Stay, linked to his mormon ward from his Facebook page.

The shooter is from Logan, Utah and has mormon affiliations. Haskell’s ex-wife is the sister of TBM Katie Stay.Houston Chronicle link.

Caitie
I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon of the “exceptional woman” lately. The exceptional woman is the woman who gets accepted by the mainstream, who is the fig leave to all the shit and sexism and misogyny, who is their poster-girl for saying “look, it is actually possible for a woman to do this, this means discrimination is over!”. She is also fundamentally safe, because one exceptional woman doesn’t threaten the status quo. After all, Europe could do with Elizabeth I.

extra hugs for beatrice

Anne D.

I can remember a whole lot of things I did wrong as a child, but damn all I did right. Possibly because my father was quick to remind me when he thought I’d done something wrong…

Well, “doing wrong” included getting a straight A. Why didn’t I get an A+? I was joking, can’t you take a joke? God, you must be the most sensitive person on earth, now I’m offended by your reaction, really, and now you’re shouting which means you’re super-wrong
I react very allergic to “It was just a joke”.

Husband and I both only ever wanted two kids, we had two girls, and FiL started mouthing off about when was I going to give Husband some sons to carry on the family name. In front of the daughters, who fortunately were too young to notice.

When I was born, I was “just another girl” to my paternal grandfather. When my at that time underage uncle got his underage girlfriend pregnant before either of them had finished their vocational training this was still regarded as a huge success because it was a boy. (Should mention that in the case of my uncle and aunt it worked out fine.
Irony had it that I was a total “Tomboy”* and my cousin a crybaby.
Now, one could think that this was a question of him having been born in the 1910s and having been a professional Nazi, but when I was pregnant with the little one in 2009 and after her birth people still offered me sympathy and told me that I was still young and could try again…

*I hate that term. I was never in any way a “boy”. One of my earliest experiences of gender was that I really got upset because people constantly misgendered me and then indicated that I was not a proper girl.

And since I have leaky brain…CD
My sympathy, I know that drill. I’m a part time single mum 5 days a week and hell I don’t know how real single parents do this shit. I still get the emotional and financial support and mostly other people take care of the laundry…
Good luck for your book proposal.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Portia (289): When you put it into the context of WOC being sterilized against their will, it sort of broadens the whole issue into a new sick perspective. They’re regulating who can reproduce and who must be prevented from reproducing and who must be prevented from preventing reproduction.

Those little info-graphics that scroll across (or appear and disappear from) the bottom of the screen as one’s main attention is supposed to be focused on something else. Sometimes they simply identify the speaker so that you can keep track of biases as you’re listening to what the speakers are saying, but these (short attention span) days it’s usually about things unrelated to the current story – like a stock ticker or a sports-score ticker or a next story ticker or whatever.

Yep, I hear ya. I comfort myself with the thought that no matter how screwed up I may be as a parent, I’m not half the asshole my dad was. Small comfort though it may be. At least my Aged Ps never cared about the gender of their grandkids. They were just happy to have some, and perfectly willing to overwhelm them with trains, dinosaurs, books and anything else the girls expressed interest in, as well as the requisite frilly dresses.

After the sons incident, I cornered Husband (who had sat there and laughed at his dad, yech), and asked him if he’d wanted a boy. He said no, he would’ve felt weird hugging a boy-child and he felt more comfortable showing affection towards daughters. I think he was also glad he didn’t have to potty train a boy; I did most of the potty work, although he,was very good about diaper changes and taking care of the kids while I ran away from home on Saturday morning.

In spite of protests and petitions from over four thousand concerned patrons, the Singapore National Library Board is moving ahead on plans to pulp three picture-books that depict non-traditional families–all at the urging of a single bigot.

The National Library Board’s official statement says that the three books in question were not “age appropriate,” stating “NLB’s understanding of family is consistent with that of the Ministry of Social and Family Development and the Ministry of Education” in Singapore, where gay sex is illegal. The “age inappropriate” picture books in question are And Tango Makes Three, the true story of two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo that are given “an egg in need of nurturing,” The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption, “objectionable” for its portrayal of gay adoptive parents, and Who’s in my family?, in which different families come together for a day at the zoo.

According to Boing Boing, the books’ destruction appears to be largely the work of Teo Kai Loon, an “activist” involved in “We Are Against Pinkdot In Singapore,” a Facebook group that protests the LGBT community. On July 8th, Loon posted a since-deleted comment on Facebook in which he quoted chief librarian of the NLB Ai Cheng as saying the library takes “strong pro-family stand in selecting books for children,” and “when library visitors like yourself [Teo] highlight to us any conflicting content within books, we review such books thoroughly and withdraw them from circulation.”

Adele Rouse got to live out every child’s dream: she flew to England to visit her favorite chemists. (That’s a thing all children want to do, right?) In this video Rouse visits some of the chemists behind Periodic Videos, an incredible YouTube channel that demonstrates some really incredible chemistry with humor and crazy hair.

Tony!, I don’t think Husband’s father hugged his sons. I certainly never saw him hug anyone, in all the years I knew him. Husband is more of a touchy-feely sort, although not pushy about it. We are a good few years older than you; the daughters are both in college, which makes me… well, I don’t want to think about that right now. :p

I’m trying to get better about seeing sexually objectifying material. The above image of She-Ra doesn’t appear to be objectifying. It’s a bad-ass pose. The camera doesn’t focus on her breasts or butt. The costume is the most questionable I think, in that it doesn’t seem practical for a warrior to wear a skirt, but they’re trying to keep her iconic look, so I think one could excuse that.
I’ve been going through the archives at The Hawkeye Initiative and I keep those images in mind as I view women in the media. This image of She-Ra looks like a man could be in the same pose and it would look fine (though it does look odd for her left hand to be on the sword, but that’s not sexual).

****

Every trailer I watch for Guardians of the Galaxy gives me a Geekgasm.

You suck. You perplex everyone and make my job harder for no reason at all. If it weren’t for you, my students would find learning English at least a dozen times easier. Nobody likes you. Go away.

With intense dislike,
an assistant ESL teacher

~*~*~*~*~*~

Tony (#257)

I like potatoes. Russet, gold, red. They are of the good. I like to haz them fried, baked, browned hashly, in cubes, as fries and well, pretty much any way imaginable. I do not like sweet potatoes. They can join the peas in the MDP’s belly.

Pssh, fie on your pea hate. The potato, leek and split pea soup I made earlier this week was superb. (With locally grown leeks and Yukon Gold potatoes, no less.)

(#303)

Holy Fuck-do these people think immigrants carry the Bubonic Plague?

If it wasn’t about racism, they would save their concern for non-immigrant kids of antivaxxers coming back from vacation somewhere that’s experiencing outbreaks of measles or whooping cough or whatever.

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gworroll (#263)

This is the 7th time ever, anywhere, that the TASER manufacturer has ever heard of this sort of mistake.

I’ve got a large bag of fava beans in my fridge that is calling my name. Any suggestions on what I should do with them? I want a good work/result ratio (last time I worked too hard for the mediocre outcome).

My mother’s favorite dinner is a salad of fava beans with beets, some other veggies (whatever salad-y ones she has in the fridge), and feta cheese on top of butter lettuce.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Okay, the Feleiades (oops, I meant Tony!’s link, here) were damn cute, but they also led me to “Professor X Cat”. Now I have to watch the whole x-cat series, but I have to pick up kids! No fun til after kiddie-bedtime for me!

Crip Dyke:
You have to check out the Wolverine Cat video. It’s awesome.

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A. Noyd:
I see. You’re one of those pea-lovers. And here I thought you were one of the good peeps all this time. You’re probably like all the other pea-lovers I know-you plot to take over the world 3 times a week and twice on tuesdays.

(ftr, I think peas are alright; thank fuck they’re not peppers, is all I can say, which are the truly evilest and vilest things humans have ever chosen to stick in their mouths – and remember, when I say that, I am actually a former sex worker)

A Noyd: Indeed, one of the only rotten things about Canadian bilingualism is that it’s in two languages with among the worst orthographies in the world, English and French. Dreadful place to immigrate, for that reason. Despite my love of its language, Japanese’ use of Chinese characters makes it dreadful as well, but given English’ status as a world language, yes, it’s an appalling orthography (as also for French, also widely used internationally).

Wildly inconsistent sound values per glyph (‘e’ in ‘secret’, ‘pet’, ‘peeve'; the entire letter ‘c’), glyphs per sound value (‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘th’, ‘-tion’, and the champion, ‘ough’ – as in ‘though’, ‘cough’, ‘rough’, ‘through’, ‘thorough’, ‘thought’), and ‘silent’ letters (some of which alter the sounds of glyphs which came earlier in the word, as in ‘vile’). All of these also apply to French, with different examples.

I met a fellow from Uruguay once, said he’d never had a spelling lesson as such after first grade. In Spanish, basically, if you can write, you can spell. He’d never spelled his first name for someone (Javier) before arriving at Canadian immigration.

Dalilama- In addition to the weight difference, the TASER was also on the other side of his body. Apparently he drew and immediately pulled the trigger, didn’t realize his mistake until he heard the shot go off.

If his excuse is true, I’m struggling to see why he shouldn’t be fired even if he’s somehow found not guilty. This isn’t some rookie who freaked out the first time he had to take someone down, he’s been on the force a few years and has even used TASERs to subdue suspects. This isn’t “he should know better”, this is “he does know better”. He just wasn’t paying attention.

Beatrice, I’m not sure if you were left and feel shitty because they didn’t come and get you, or if you forgot to go and collect someone and feel shitty because you forgot them – but either way I’m really sorry, and I’d like to send you this bunch of hugs.

As an Australian, can I just say I *hate* the word “pepper”? Are you talking about a capsicum? A chilli? Or pepper?! Also, what the hell are green onions? there are at least 3 different vegetables that name is used interchangeably for. I do love me some capsicum though. On pizza, in salads, roasted with a bunch of other vegetables, in fajitas… yum!

Now I’m hungry. Also, that recipe looks delicious, carlie! I’ve never used wine when cooking a stir fry before.

So my match screenname includes “portia”. One guy messaged me (and he actually seems very cool – he went on a tirade about religion and then told me all his law-student-geekery and about his jury trial next week…so…maybe?) and said “Hi Portia” and it seriously only occurred to me a day later that he didn’t call me by my name, but by my nym. “Portia” is really in my brain as my identity, more than I thought. I like it.

As an Australian, can I just say I *hate* the word “pepper”? Are you talking about a capsicum? A chilli? Or pepper?! Also, what the hell are green onions? there are at least 3 different vegetables that name is used interchangeably for. I do love me some capsicum though. On pizza, in salads, roasted with a bunch of other vegetables, in fajitas… yum!

To be honest, I was assuming CaitieCat was talking about bell peppers, which is where I went with it (hence ‘rainbow’).

Bell pepper, also known as sweet pepper or a pepper (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) and capsicum (in India, Australia and New Zealand), is a cultivar group of the species Capsicum annuum.[1] Cultivars of the plant produce fruits in different colors, including red, yellow, orange, green, chocolate/brown, vanilla/white, and purple. Bell peppers are sometimes grouped with less pungent pepper varieties as “sweet peppers”.
{…}

While the bell pepper is a member of the Capsicum genus, it is the only Capsicum that does not produce capsaicin,[3] a lipophilic chemical that can cause a strong burning sensation when it comes in contact with mucous membranes. (An exception to this is the hybrid variety Mexibelle, which does contain a moderate level of capsaicin, and is therefore, somewhat hot). The lack of capsaicin in bell peppers is due to a recessive form of a gene that eliminates capsaicin and, consequently, the “hot” taste usually associated with the rest of the Capsicum genus

Given that, I have no idea what type of chili you’re referring to when you say you like capsicum on pizza.

Also, green onions are scallions:

A scallion (spring onion in England) is one of various Allium species, all of which have hollow green leaves (like the common onion), but which lack a fully developed root bulb. It has a relatively mild onion flavour, and is used as a vegetable, either raw or cooked. Many other names are used, including green onion, spring onion, salad onion, table onion, green shallot, onion stick, long onion, baby onion, precious onion, yard onion, gibbon, syboe or scally onion.

Got my eBay password changed(I hadn’t logged in since before the breach), my Paypal shifted over to my current email address(after 7+ years of it being my primary address), a couple eBay auctions up, a donate button on my blog. Hopefully I’ll get some extra income coming in.

I don’t think I’d want to do the amount of work needed for eBay to be a primary income source, but hitting up an occasional yard sale to look for profitable items might be a usefully large supplement without taking up so much time that I can’t enjoy the extra income.

Apparently one of my textbooks from 12 years ago has a standard used price in the range of $300. That actually prompted me to quickly revise my auction and double what I was asking for, and I’m still by far the cheapest auction for this book. I suppose mainframe computer textbooks just don’t have large print runs or go obsolete as quickly as other computer books. If the auction sells at what I’m asking for, I’ll actually have made a profit from buying the book new. And people can’t get it cheaper from Amazon, I’ve checked.

jste, all of them. Chilis, green/yellow/red, and the very taste/smell of capsicum. I don’t even like black pepper/peppercorns. If it has the word ‘pepper’ in it, I won’t like it.

There’s something about them that just smells wrong to me, and the taste is worse. Coffee is the same way for me; it’s a nauseating smell, and a nastier taste. I described it, hyperbolically, as being like drinking ‘a cup filled with the squeezings of the inpacted anal gland of a llama which died of gangrene and has been lying in the sun for six days’.

To be honest, I was assuming CaitieCat was talking about bell peppers, which is where I went with it (hence ‘rainbow’).

Well, my complaint basically boils down to “you use different words than the ones I grew up with” which is silly, and irrational, but nevertheless. What you call scallions, I grew up calling shallots, sometimes when recipes call for spring onions, they mean something that looks similar to shallots but has an actual bulb shape, cillantro has always been corriander, etc. When I started cooking for myself, these terminology differences were common annoyances, trying to work out what those bloody recipe writers actually wanted me to use.
—
CaitieCat, I have similar experiences with corriander. Tastes worse than dirt. Why on earth do people cook with it?

I need some white privilege! In return for paying for my white privilege, I would love to give you some “black privilege” in return! Yes, it is difficult being a black person but there are some neat perks, as you will discover if you donate!

$5 level – At this level, I agree to be the black friend you are referencing when you tell people “I’m not racist, I have a black friend!”

$15 level – Not only will I be your bud, I will also pose in a selfie with you that you may use to prove the existance of your black friend (must be local to NYC to redeem)

$65 level – At this level, you may touch my hair without asking, enabling you to potentially absorb some of my magical afro powers.

Oh Maude, I’m drunk-posting. Sort of. A bit of Tequila on the rocks, sipped slowly. Anyhow, I have a twin sister. My parents were truly low-sensitivity and extraordinarily needy. Excruciatingly long painful story… I mothered my damn mother. At the age of nine she told me (did not tell my three other sisters) that the reason my father hated us is because she got pregnant before they got married, she had an abortion, and the aborted product was twin boys. My poor, poor fucking father always wanted boys but didn’t get any. He hates you. It isn’t his fault. I didn’t cry when he died.

I’d also like to thank again for giving me instructions on how to make soup. I made a black bean soup tonight and it was so good that I ate the entire batch. I have confidence I never had before thanks to you.

I don’t really like peppers. or anything with large amounts of capsaicin really. Sounds painful.

Ugh, not to mention my brain has decided it will not do anything this summer. Especially anything scary. Doubly so anything I want. With me going off to college, it’d be an excellent time to start transitioning, but I can’t get myself to. The concept sounds great–the details not so much, thanks to wishful thinking and the bigotry I used to take part in.

And thunk, if you’re a freak, then we’re freaks together. But I do completely get the fear, because yeah, it can really suck.

From my pov, though, the happiness it brought was worth all the bad. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a grown woman. And today, I am one. I literally am living my dream, for all the shit I had to wade through neck-deep to get here.

I hope it feels comfortable enough for you to actually manage it sometime, if you think it’s right for you. It’s not easy, but it’s highly rewarding, if it’s the right choice.

*hugs* and respect.

morgan, all the hugs. I won’t lift a finger to go to the funeral of the man my mother married after she divorced from my father, when he dies (and if it’s soon, I won’t cry about that, either). He hasn’t spoken a syllable to me in 22 years, since the day I told them I would transition. Fuck him. I don’t think we owe our family-of-origin anything, inherently.

While the bell pepper is a member of the Capsicum genus, it is the only Capsicum that does not produce capsaicin,[3] a lipophilic chemical that can cause a strong burning sensation when it comes in contact with mucous membranes. (An exception to this is the hybrid variety Mexibelle, which does contain a moderate level of capsaicin, and is therefore, somewhat hot). The lack of capsaicin in bell peppers is due to a recessive form of a gene that eliminates capsaicin and, consequently, the “hot” taste usually associated with the rest of the Capsicum genus

You’re probably like all the other pea-lovers I know-you plot to take over the world 3 times a week and twice on tuesdays.

Oh, hell no. That sounds like way too much work. The most I can rise to is every other month dejectedly wishing someone would just hand me the world.

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CaitieCat (#341)

Despite my love of its language, Japanese’ use of Chinese characters makes it dreadful as well, but given English’ status as a world language, yes, it’s an appalling orthography (as also for French, also widely used internationally).

I kind of like kanji because I was always interested in the meanings of word roots and affixes and kanji tends to make that sort of thing really plain. It is silly how much harder kanji makes learning to read, though. And French spelling drives me up the wall with how there are about eight times more letters in every word than you actually need. (Not that English is especially economical, but at least I’m used to it.)

Wildly inconsistent sound values per glyph (‘e’ in ‘secret’, ‘pet’, ‘peeve’; the entire letter ‘c’), glyphs per sound value (‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘th’, ‘-tion’, and the champion, ‘ough’ – as in ‘though’, ‘cough’, ‘rough’, ‘through’, ‘thorough’, ‘thought’), and ‘silent’ letters (some of which alter the sounds of glyphs which came earlier in the word, as in ‘vile’).

Even things that are more consistent are a pain, like the “ight” in “right” and “tight.” One of the students was trying to pronounce every letter in “right” the other day. He was doing remarkably well with the consonant cluster. Too bad for him we don’t treat it as a consonant cluster. And then today we were going over how when you add “ing” to a verb ending in a single “e” you remove the “e.” But you don’t for verbs that end “ee,” like “see” or “agree.” Why remove the “e”? Because fuck everyone who likes logic, that’s why.

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jste (#347)

As an Australian, can I just say I *hate* the word “pepper”? Are you talking about a capsicum? A chilli? Or pepper?!

Without specification, err on the side of bell pepper. As someone who loathes bell peppers (but likes several other varieties of pepper), this rule serves me well.

Hollywood is still intent on pushing the stupid meme that humans only use 10% of our brains, and if you unlock the other 90%, who knows what will happen

Background: Decided to take my kids on various trips this summer to keep us from becoming pure couch potatoes, and we went to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (since we live just outside the city). There is an exhibit on The Brain going on. In big letters on one wall — “You always use all of your brain, even when you are sleeping.”

I want to see “Lucy”, but these commercials that keep repeating that 10% meme are starting to put me off.

Crip Dyke @ 323

@Tony!

Fathers hug their sons. It’s a thing that happens.

What are you, gay?!?!

Yeah, I admit here that I may be working against that toxic masculinity instilled in me. And against the culture. I have very few memories of hugging my dad. (Should mention I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s.) I never doubted my dad loved me, cared, wanted the best for me… all of it. I don’t know how much of his hugging reticence is due to his dad (and through the family line) and how much due to him just not being a hugger (though there have been indications over the years that, really, he is just not a hugger).

My son and I (he’s 9) don’t hug much. Usually because he is in non-stop motion. When he goes to bed, I get to rub his back or side and give him a kiss on the head or cheek. But there is that nagging feeling in the back of my head that fathers don’t hug their kids — that’s just not the way things are done — and I hope my kids reluctance is due to their “tween” age than to anything I subconsciously did.

CatieCat @334

thank fuck they’re not peppers, is all I can say, which are the truly evilest and vilest things humans have ever chosen to stick in their mouths – and remember, when I say that, I am actually a former sex worker

My mother would have agreed with you. She despised peppers from green bell on up. I don’t like the green bell myself, though the sweeter ones don’t bother me. And I love the hot peppers so much that I am growing 4 different ones in my garden.

I like that on the internet I encounter people who have problems with foods I took for granted.

morgan

I am willing to throw another hug on the pile if you want it.

***

Are they de-sexualizing Batgirl’s costume? Because if that article has actual sketches, it looks fantastic.

Yeah, I admit here that I may be working against that toxic masculinity instilled in me. And against the culture. I have very few memories of hugging my dad. (Should mention I grew up in the 70′s and 80′s.) I never doubted my dad loved me, cared, wanted the best for me… all of it. I don’t know how much of his hugging reticence is due to his dad (and through the family line) and how much due to him just not being a hugger (though there have been indications over the years that, really, he is just not a hugger).

My son and I (he’s 9) don’t hug much. Usually because he is in non-stop motion. When he goes to bed, I get to rub his back or side and give him a kiss on the head or cheek. But there is that nagging feeling in the back of my head that fathers don’t hug their kids — that’s just not the way things are done — and I hope my kids reluctance is due to their “tween” age than to anything I subconsciously did.

Warning: One of my incredibly long posts ahead-
Growing up, I never knew how much I wanted a hug from my father. Or a kiss on the cheek. I know as a child, a young child, that I got that. But as I got older, my father, who was in the military, was not home as much as I’d have liked. He was in the army and he would get sent away for months at a time, leaving my mother, my sister, and myself. I remember him giving me the “you’re the man of the house now” speech, and would tell me I need to watch my sister and help my mother. I never told him I didn’t want that responsibility. I think I tried my best, but it’s not like there was a rule book. As I entered my teen years, and hormones started kicking in, I began to be attracted to men. It wasn’t anything I knew how to deal with.

I remember the first time I ever looked at a man and thought he was attractive. I was in 8th grade. The first half of my 8th grade year in El Paso, TX. It was my gym teacher. I didn’t know what the hell was going through my head, or what I was feeling. To this day, I’m not sure I could put it in words. I just knew that I had feelings that I had no words for. There was no language available to me to express how I felt. There were no people around for me to look to for guidance. It was the beginning of a period of loneliness and frustration for me.

I also began going through puberty around the same time. I was a late bloomer, from what I’ve heard. I think I was an actual teen when it started happening-13 (maybe 12…the memory is a bit hazy on that). One of the things I was so “blessed” with was acne. Not the occasional pimple here or there, but fucking connect the dots. My pimples had pimples and they brought friends with them.

I felt so fucking ugly.
I’d look in the mirror in the morning when I woke up and feel so ashamed that I looked that way. All I could think of was “this is how people are going to see me”. Combined with that were these growing feelings inside me that I knew nothing about. Men. I knew I wasn’t supposed to look at them. Society told me otherwise. Society told me that I’m a guy and guys like girls. You don’t disobey society because then there are consequences. So I didn’t disobey. I was a good boy.

Dad was around for stretches too. He wasn’t absent from my life, even though he was gone for short stretches. But those stretches made me frustrated sometimes. I wanted to be a normal kid. I didn’t want to move around as much as we did. I wanted to have friends. I wanted sleepovers. I wanted to not have the feelings that were burgeoning within me. I wanted to have a smooth complexion, free of whiteheads and blackheads.

But no, that wasn’t in the cards.

As I got older, for reasons that I don’t remember with sufficient clarity, tension grew at home. My father and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and I remember being so frustrated and mad at him. My parents believed in spanking, but I was never abused. But I didn’t like being spanked. I didn’t like feeling the belt or the hand or the slipper or the paddle. It made my frustration grow.

My father and I grew further apart.

*Possible TMI*
I was 16 years old when I first masturbated. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Mom, sis, and I went to see dad in Texas and I snuck away to a convenience store and stole an adult magazine. After I finished, well, I’m sure most people here know what that first experience with an orgasm is like. That also began a period of time where I shoplifted. It was always adult magazines.

I never got the birds and the bees talk. Nothing from mom, nothing from dad. I knew nothing about sex or sexuality…nada. I knew that I was looking at the men in the magazines more than the women. I vaguely remember what it was like when I saw ads for PlayGIRL and realized it was all about men. Then I started stealing them. I still didn’t know what gay, queer, or homosexual was. I got cocky though. I began thinking I couldn’t get caught and we *all* know what that often leads to:

I got caught. And I didn’t get caught and given a slap on the wrist. I didn’t get caught stealing just any nudie mag. I got caught stealing on a military base at the Post Exchange while my mother was shopping. The security guard caught me and brought me to the office, and called my mother in and of course I was mortified. I knew I was in trouble.

Did I mention I tried to steal a issue of PlayGIRL?
Yeah.

The trip home was filled with admonishments from mom, and the obligatory “you’re grounded for eternity” talk. She also informed me that what I’d been trying to steal was a magazine with nude men in it. I played it off so cool (NOOOOOOOOOOT), and said I thought it had women in it bc it said PlayGIRL. Of course I was more scared of dad finding out, which of course he did and of course I got a spanking.

For my final two years in high school, I dated two separate girls. We never did anything more than kiss. I never went to Prom, and I hated that. I hated missing out on something that is so important to teens. As I type this, part of me-that big part of me that is so lonely and alone…that part of me that wishes I had a boyfriend-part of me wishes and hopes for the day when I can dance with a partner and pretend, for just a second that I’m at prom. Just pretend to experience what is such an important part of many peoples’ lives.

I digress.

As I reached the end of my high school years, I still didn’t know anyone gay, but I began to…’accept’ is not remotely the term I’d use…I began to give in to my desires. Not sexually of course. I was a virgin, and the loss of my virginity when I was 21 was still 3 years away. No, I didn’t want to date girls any longer. I looked at guys more. I fantasized about guys in ways I never had. But I still couldn’t put a name to any of my feelings. To be honest I’m not sure when that happened, but I do know it was after high school, and before I turned 21. At some point, and I suspect that would be my initial years in college, I learned what a ‘homosexual’ was. I learned what it meant to be ‘gay’. I felt free.

Well, as free as you can be when you also learn that the message from society is YOU’RE FUCKED UP IN THE HEAD. So, yeah, free? Not so much. Still, it was somewhat liberating to be able to put a name on what I was feeling. I’m ga…bisexual. Yup. Now I speak for no one but myself on this, but I knew full well back then that I wasn’t attracted to women. I wasn’t bisexual. But I wanted to be. I figured that it would be easier for people, friends, family, coworkers…to accept me if I wasn’t gay. Thing is, I never came out to anyone and said I was bisexual. I kept it to myself.

When I finally built up the courage to accept that I was gay, I told my best friend. I planned it though. He and I were going to see a movie one night and I decided to drive. I had a plan you see. I’d tell him on the way to the movie and since I was driving, if he freaked out, he couldn’t kick me out of the car because he was the passenger. I can’t describe how hard it was to open up and tell him.

And I can’t express the joy I felt when he said what amounted to “so what?” He literally didn’t care. We still went to the movie. We still remained close friends. It wasn’t a big deal to him. I lost track of him over the years, and I haven’t seen him since I was in my early 20s, but I’m so incredibly thankful that he responded in such a nonjudgmental and positive way. If he’d rejected me, I have no idea what I’d have done.

Following that, I built up the courage to tell the few friends I had. I told my coworkers. No one had a problem. Strangely enough (well I understand a lot better now), my GM at the pizza restaurant I was working at had a bigger issue with me being a PoC dating a white man, than with me being a guy who likes guys. Ugh.

I told my sister next to last. She also responded with “ok. That’s cool.” I saved my parents for last.

That was another one of those immensely difficult things to do. On par with telling my best friend. I remember telling my mother and father and my mother’s reaction was “I’m not going to have grandkids”. My dad’s reaction was basically “buttsex hurts”. They weren’t open. They weren’t positive. They didn’t outright reject me, or tell me to get out, but it still hurt. It hurt so bad I can STILL feel the pain (yeah, I’m crying).

This was the first time in my life when I felt suicidal. I fled the house and drove away. I remember thinking I should just accelerate into a light pole and kill myself. I remember thinking that my sister would miss me and wondering how she’d deal with losing her brother. That thought saved me. That thought kept me from going through with suicide.

But I was still devastated, so I moved out of my parents home. For the better part of the next decade, my father and I almost never spoke. I came home for holidays and we pretended to be a family again. We never talked about me being gay. I certainly never thought to bring a boyfriend home. I tried to present as straight. My mother and I weren’t super close either, bc I was still angry that she rejected me. We were closer than dad and I. His focus was always “how is work/school/health”. It felt like being a teenager again. It felt like my father didn’t love me, even as he was showing concern for me.

Over the years, my mother and sister grew frustrated at the distance between my father and I because it was palpable. It made the holidays not quite so joyous when I didn’t even want to be around him. Finally, after nearly a decade, my mother implored me to talk to my dad. I told her why I didn’t want to. She said she had long ago accepted that I was gay and that he did too. But WHY? I asked. WHY did he not say that to me? WHY couldn’t my father just tell me that he loved me and that he accepted me for who I am? She told me it was largely bc of how he was raised. He wasn’t raised to show emotion. He was raised to be what men were “supposed” to be. The breadwinner. The rock. The provider. But I didn’t want any of that, bc that’s what I’d had all my life from him. I wanted my father to show me some emotion. I didn’t want a car or money.

I WANTED A DAMN HUG.

Now, I say I wanted a hug, but what I really wanted was for him to show me or tell me that he loved me. To demonstrate in some way other than how he always had-that he loved me. Was that too much to ask? I didn’t think so. But how could I convey what I wanted so that he could understand. I figured a conversation wouldn’t work because I’d forget stuff, or he’d react to something the wrong way or I’d get angry at something. I decided to send him a note. Not just any note though. I decided to hand write a note. My hope was that the time and effort it takes to write a note would mean something. I also figured it was a good idea bc he couldn’t immediately react to the letter in the way he could if I were telling him. He could read it, and absorb it. He could put it down and think about it. He could come back to it. He could read it as many times as he liked.

So that’s what I did. I wrote him a letter. A 9 page letter. All that stuff I just typed here? That’s what went in the letter. I poured out everything to him. And I told him all I wanted was for him to show me some emotion. To give me something to show that he loved me.

And you know what?

He did. I’ll never forget the first conversation we had. He said he accepted me and that he was sorry. And most importantly, he told me he loved me. He still tells me he loves me. He hugs me. Yeah, he’s (along with mom) been helping to financially support me for the last 6 weeks, but he also gives emotional support.

Things are different now between us. We have actual conversations. We talk about politics. He reads my Facebook posts. We have a relationship that’s…well, I’m happy with our relationship. And he also continues to tell me he loves me. He’s also told me he’s proud of the man I’ve turned out to be.

—

That was emotionally draining. I’ve shared much of that here over the years, but ajb47 I wanted to share some of that with you to show that, at least for me, it’s not specifically the hug that was important. It’s the showing of love. It’s demonstrating, in some way aside from financial support that the love is there. When you said:

When he goes to bed, I get to rub his back or side and give him a kiss on the head or cheek.

*That’s* what I’m talking about. I’m not a dad. I don’t know what it’s like. Someday I’d like to be, but that’s the subject of a different emotionally charged post. I just wanted to let you know that I think it’s not the hug that’s important. It’s the showing of love in some way outside of financial support. And you’re doing that. And I think it’s great.

Portia
I have several nyms that I react to in meatspace. One of them is “Elbe”, short for “Elbereth”. Once, in a forum where I used Giliell as well, somebody complained about the “Elbe” and it took me a while to realize that she was not talking about me.

A. Noyd
Are you using the hear-say-write order? That’s the least confusing one. Doesn’t help with the hell of spelling, but at least with pronounciation.

+++Caitie

I met a fellow from Uruguay once, said he’d never had a spelling lesson as such after first grade. In Spanish, basically, if you can write, you can spell. He’d never spelled his first name for someone (Javier) before arriving at Canadian immigration.

Well, there are a few rules for no reason but and some ambigiuities in Spanish as well, especially in Latin America where c and z are pronounced like s, ll and y are the same and in general v and b are the same, which leads to some weird spelling, but in general, yes.

+++
The more I watch Frozen (that’s what happens when you have a sick kid with a new DVD), the more I like Anna and the more I want to shout at their parents. Fucking idiots, making the girl feel ashamed for something that’s not her fault and then forcig both daughters into isolation.

+++morgan
*hugs*
Fortunately Mr. is as offended by such comments as I am. Actually, he’s one of those annoying parents who kind of expect everybody to like their children ;)

I feel like I remember who I actually am only at night; during the day I’m too distracted and scared to do anything. This is terribly inconvenient for a number of reasons, mostly related to others sleeping.

Tony Your @367 was beautiful! I always love reading what you have to say and that really moved me. With me, what really tugs my heartstrings now is that my daughter is at the age where she can ask for a cuddle when she’s upset. How could any parent deny their child that kind of comfort?

Also your @326 is the university where I work. Yay!

Full disclosure: I like peppers, coffee and cheese (But not all at the same time), but dislike peas. I’m ambivalent to sweet potatoes.

And to be slightly more on topic that usual for my occasional forays into the lounge, my OH and I have been having those tentative sort of conversations about kids at the moment, and I told him one of the things I was concerned about was that he’d have to be careful not to treat a future daughter differently to a future son. He’s the only child of an only child, and didn’t grow up with female relatives near in age to him, plus he’s an engineer and sort of feels he knows how to do fun stuff for boys (lego, electronics, taking things apart, building things) but doesn’t seem to realise girls could do all that too. My concerns really came to a head because we recently spent some time with friends who have 2 kids, one of each, and I felt like he ignored their daughter – turns out he felt a little bit bad about that too, but talked about an example where he’d lifted up the 2 year old boy to show him the inside of the transformer box, and knew the 4 year old girl was looking interested too but felt uncomfortable lifting her up because she was a girl, and he wasn’t sure how he could hold her.

The closest he’s ever come to thinking about gender stuff is to tell me that he wouldn’t want a daughter to work on a submarine because of the risk of sexual assault, although this doesn’t seem to translate into a realisation that if the risks are that high, perhaps the culture should be changed. He’s severely dyslexic, and very resistant to reading things he doesn’t have to for work, so I can’t point him in the direction of reading material, and I think he’s got a pretty high chance of having undiagnosed mild Aspergers (effectively, I find assuming he has is a good guide to modify my behaviour when dealing with him, but he wouldn’t really gain much from a diagnosis himself, as he won’t even tell his employer about the dyslexia). I know he means well, but he’s absorbed a lot of sexist (and classist, but that’s a different problem to solve, and luckily he seems to have missed out on the homophobia that so often goes along with this) attitudes, and I’m trying to gently introduce him to the wider world of equality and social justice. He’s getting better at things slowly, but I need him to get it a bit more before we might have a child. It’s easy to share reading material with people who want to read up about it themselves, but can anyone suggest non-written things that might give me some teaching moments?

Tony
Thank you for sharing that. And I’m glad that there are parents in the world who can admit they made a mistake and make up.

+++
Men and hugging
My FIL used to be a plumber. Manly men work with lots of toxic masculinity. Working class pride. They were none of those sissy men who worked in offices and who needed to cut their fingernails.
After he retired he took up a part time job in a car renting company. His colleagues are from many different backgrounds (I swear there are guys who don’t actually work for the money but for the pleasure of getting to drive all sorts of fast upper-class cars) and there’s a climate of friendship and, yes, hugs for things like birthdays and such. And it does him so much good.

+++kaytebe

plus he’s an engineer and sort of feels he knows how to do fun stuff for boys (lego, electronics, taking things apart, building things) but doesn’t seem to realise girls could do all that too.

My little one recently got a Lego Friends miniset. Apart from bows on a bear, it’s basically the standard 50 piece Lego set and since she got it she must have taken it apart and put together like 20 times. She also likes pink very much.

Well, this is certainly not going to help with the situation on the southern border of the US. The guys involved in Open Carry are organizing and “training” to confront undocumented immigrants.

The reported leader of an ongoing effort to organize an armed militia to go to the Texas-Mexico border was an active participant in Open Carry Texas […]

Chris Davis, the reported leader of the militia that encompasses many of the same groups that supported Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy in his standoff with federal authorities, was cited by San Antonio police for disorderly conduct […]

Open Carry Texas protesters became notorious in recent months for holding armed demonstrations at various restaurants and chain stores […]

The national gun lobby group later offered a rare public apology for its condemnation after Open Carry Texas members began cutting up their NRA membership cards.

Davis was also reportedly discharged from the U.S. Army in 2001 “under other than honorable conditions in lieu of trial by court martial.”[…]

Davis has been identified as the leader of Operation Secure Our Border. In a YouTube video that has since been taken down, he appeared to describe how the job would be done: “You see an illegal. You point your gun dead at him, right between his eyes, and you say, ‘Get back across the border or you will be shot.'”

Davis told KRGV in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, earlier this week that the militia had set up a command post in Von Ormy, Texas, a town of 1,000 that’s more than 100 miles from the border. He said that they would train and get organized there.

The Green family that owns Hobby Lobby has long-term goals that far exceed their objections to having employee insurance that covers contraceptive devices, they want to change the face of education in the USA:

STEVE GREEN: “We’re working on 4 year public school bible curriculum. The first year will be a summary of all three of those section. It’s history, it’s impact and it’s story. Then the next 3 years is going in depth in each of those — a year for the history, a year for the impact and a year for the story — in some order… The nation is in danger because of its ignorance of what God has taught. . . . If we don’t know it, our future is going to be very scary … We were looking – uh- we — we were talking – – discussed a college curriculum but it’s no — we really want to get — be into the – um – high school level because we want to reach as many as possible. Someday, I would argue, it should be mandated. Here’s a book that’s impacted our world, unlike any other, and you’re not gonna teach it? There’s — there’s something wrong with that.”
[….]

So, all public schools would have to teach a four-year bible course. That would be a mandate.

In April of this year, the Mustang School Board approved Green’s Bible Curriculum even though, as of June 2014 the curriculum was still in draft form and was still undergoing revisions. […]

In order to ‘creep’ his curriculum into the school system, Steve Green created a 501(c)3 called “Museum of the Bible Inc.” Then, Steve Green created the “Green Scholars Initiative” (GSI) to run the “Museum” and to create his bible curriculum for schools.

Religious Right activist Bradlee Dean is not too pleased with the increasing number of Christian denominations accepting LGBT people, claiming that the “apostate” churches are “counterfeits that open doors wide to the gates of hell” and are “spitting toward Heaven.”

Dean also links President Obama and his “criminal, ‘sodomite-advocating’ administration” to these “effeminate” Christians, likening the president to the “evil king” Jeroboam. […]

Lynna #385, you can’t fault a man, or remove his right to carry a religious totem of his holy masculinity, for doing what he wants with his property!

Sheesh, what’s America coming to? Next you’ll be trying to say that some guy (wrongfully) convicted of fifteen bank robberies can’t have an RPG, or that police forces shouldn’t be deploying military hardware.

A Canadian high school student and her mother are taking their objections to abstinence-only education all the way to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, saying that making the teen sit through a Christian-based course about sexual purity violated her rights as a nonbeliever.

Last year, when Emily Dawson’s public school required her to attend a two-day abstinence education class delivered by a conservative religious group, she was shocked by what she heard from the speaker. “She did a lot of slut-shaming to the women, and pointed out the guys as horn-dogs,” Emily, who is now 18 years old, recounted to the Edmonton Journal. She also said that questions about same-sex relationships from LGBT students were immediately shut down.

Emily’s mother, Kathy Dawson, tried to pull her out of the course so she wouldn’t have to attend the second day. But school officials told her that attendance was mandatory in order for Emily to pass her Career and Life Management class. High school students in Alberta can’t graduate without passing that class.

So Dawson decided to sit in on the abstinence lecture to experience it for herself — and, as a single mother, she was personally offended by the messages about families like hers. Dawson told CBC News that the speakers were essentially “bashing” single parents, saying that their kids are “prone to depression, suicide, juvenile delinquency.” […]

Ugh, it’s already 72F/22C and supposed to get up to 91F/33C. And every day for the next 5 days is predicted to get that hot. Which I’m sure some of you are shrugging at, but Seattle doesn’t have air conditioners in most apartments or houses. Half our buses and many businesses lack it as well. We’re under an “excessive heat watch.”

Good book, by the way. I just finished it today. And bought the other two books in the series yesterday, though I’m going to wait a while to start them. I should spend some time studying English in English so I don’t keep the habit of using literal translations or transliterations of Japanese terms for English grammar. The Japanese books, though, are invaluable for how they point out the clever but wrong logic that Japanese English learners use that gets them in trouble. Both on the level of wanting English to work more like Japanese and then (understandably) wanting English not to have so many damn exceptions to its own rules.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Giliell (#370)

Are you using the hear-say-write order?

Sort of, but the class is a real mix of skill and experience levels. (Also language background, educational background and innate talent.) All sorts of things end up on worksheets that haven’t yet been introduced to a certain percentage of the students. Usually vocab and spelling. Even if they know the vocab, they might never have seen it connected to the spelling before. We go over whatever the worksheets are focusing on in advance, of course, but it’s impossible to cover everything that appears.

So what happens is, if there is only one or two students struggling with that thing and there are enough volunteers, we can improvise a personal mini-lesson. (I could definitely use some teaching techniques for that.) If it’s more than just a few students, we turn it into a spin-off mini-lesson for the whole class. Anyway, the grammar book in English I planned to tackle next starts with teaching techniques, and if something useful isn’t in there, I’ll try the other book about teaching that I got.

Everyone has a stake in ending the stigma against trans identities, but gay people may have a more personal interest. When kids are bullied and called anti-gay slurs, it’s rarely because the victim seemed to be attracted to members of the same sex. It’s because the child did not conform to gender expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. The bullies might yell “gay,” but it’s about gender expression.

It was a relief to finally stop being in denial about the fact that I am a girl.But when I was attempting to live part-time in boy drag, I was hyper-aware of how perceptions of black masculinity influence the ways in which people behave in relationship to a body in the public space. I noticed how much harder it was to get a taxi, for example, when I was dressed in boy drag as opposed to when I was dressed as myself. In black male drag, I noticed white women cross to the other side of the street and clutch their purses tighter.When I was perceived as a black man I became a threat to public safety. When I was dressed as myself, it was my safety that was threatened.

I just came across this on Upworthy and it struck a chord. Perhaps it’ll ring true for some of you too. It’s a Canadian PSA on depression and other mental disorders. It’s a very gentle ad, but it might still trigger those of us who have struggled with depression et. al., so be warned.

I like peppers, coffee and cheese (But not all at the same time), but dislike peas. I’m ambivalent to sweet potatoes.

Project Clone Penguin is progressing nicely, it seems…

(Thinks about that for a moment…)

…

Hey! I also like peppers, peppers, cheese, coffee, dislike peas, and am ambivalent about peppers and sweet potatoes… (Furiously checks himself for unexpected feathers or a desire to conduct the world’s first moonshot using a trebuchet and a kitten — finds nothing…) Whew!

I *hate* the word “pepper”? Are you talking about a capsicum? A chilli? Or pepper?!

….can someone explain to me where the idea that there’s a compelling, fundamental difference between “an action” and “an omission” even comes from? Because I’m getting really fucking tired of seeing people whip that out to try and derail an otherwise ironclad argument-by-analogy… >.>

*hugs* for thunk.
It’s possible that we’re all freaks, each in our own, freaky ways. And that’s not bad.
:D
–
I find this notion that something “tastes” hot confusing. It’s not (for me) a taste, but a sensation, and bell peppers have it, too. Even the fleshy bits. Even with every last seed and bit of rib scraped off. And it burns my lips, which I don’t associate with taste at all, the same way it burns inside my mouth (when I am so unfortunate as to be accidentally exposed).
So, either I’ve been doing this whole “flavor” thing wrong all this time, or I can’t tell the difference between taste-heat/burn, and allergic-reaction-heat/burn.
–ajb47:

Are they de-sexualizing Batgirl’s costume? Because if that article has actual sketches, it looks fantastic.

Awesome, if true; and I agree.
And I can already hear the screams of the outraged fan-boys. “Where’s the cleavage?!?”, they cry. “What good is she if we can’t see humongous tits?!?!?” And, “What? No high heeled boots? I likes my asses to look perky!”
–*hugs* for Tony!. Ignorance of facts sure does breed confusion, and fear, and pain, don’t it?
I’m glad that you and your dad were able to “find” each other.

A thing that always bugs me about the “we aren’t going to have grandkids” thing—you have a sister. Her potential kids don’t/wouldn’t count?
-

The claim that doing harm is no worse than allowing harm flies in the face of powerful intuitions to the contrary. These intuitions can be partially explained away by pointing to other morally significant distinctions (distinctions concerning intentions, difficulty or ease of avoiding the harm, etc) that often coincide with the distinction between doing and allowing harm.

More intuitively, I think it’s a defense mechanism against the injustice and horror that go on in the world. It’s easy to say I have a duty not to murder or steal from everyone in the world. It’s a lot harder to accept that I have a duty to not let anyone die or live in poverty if I could prevent it. We draw limits to our responsibilities to each other to allow ourselves to still enjoy luxuries while people starve. The action/inaction distinction is one such bright line limit.

The most dangerous threat to American citizens is tuberculosis, against which very few Americans are vaccinated. However, more than 90 percent of Central Americans are vaccinated against the disease, and it is highly unlikely that those suffering the contagious, multi-drug-resistant form of it would be able to make the arduous trip across the Texas border — especially if the patient stricken with it were a child.

Fox News commentator Cal Thomas demanded to know whether these undocumented children had papers proving that they had been vaccinated for “mumps, measles, rubella, polio, tetanus and diphtheria.”

But as The Texas Observer‘s Rachel Pearson noted, children from Guatemala — where vaccines are provided free of charge by the government’s universal health care system — are more likely to be vaccinated against those diseases than children in Texas, where the rate of parents who “opt out” of vaccinations citing “reasons of conscience” has increased every year since 2003.

I tend to dislike that analogy for being helpful to the anti-choice side (continuing a pregnancy isn’t saving a person’s life). The problem is that the natural response to their action or omission distinction is to come up with very compelling examples of when letting die is obviously horrible, which, in turn, implies an obligation to donate the organ and, by analogy, an obligation not to terminate the pregnancy. It’s also just way too easy for the anti-choicer to bite the bullet and endorse mandatory organ donation, either generally or, at the very least, from parents to children.

the question of which linguistic processes were at work making “goddamn” to “dat-gum”. Must look that up sometime.

It’s called taboo deformation. :-)

Hollywood is still intent on pushing the stupid meme that humans only use 10% of our brains, and if you unlock the other 90%, who knows what will happen?

An epic epileptic seizure…?

I met a fellow from Uruguay once, said he’d never had a spelling lesson as such after first grade. In Spanish, basically, if you can write, you can spell.

Spanish is weaksauce. B and v are pronounced the same, so are z and c before e and i, and in most places s is pronounced the same way; j and g before e and i are pronounced the same; in most places, y and ll are pronounced the same; and the rules for where to mark stressed syllables with an accent and where not to do that are unambiguous, but complex enough that native speakers still mess them up on occasion.

And French spelling drives me up the wall with how there are about eight times more letters in every word than you actually need. (Not that English is especially economical, but at least I’m used to it.)

French spelling is, however, one-sided: if you only know how to pronounce a word, there may be lots of potential ways to spell it (it’s not phonemic) – but if you know how to spell it, you know how to pronounce it even if you’ve never heard it before (it’s graphemic), except for proper names and a few small common words. English spelling is neither phonemic nor graphemic.

German spelling is neither as well, but to a much lesser degree than English!

Stop the presses. More than half of what FOX News says is…false? Who would have ever imagined that? I mean really, it’s not like they’re an echo chamber. I know they have some of the best and brightest journalists dedicated to vetting every piece of information that is broadcast from their station. And surely if they knew they were telling lies, feeding misinformation to the public, and engaging in fear mongering on a national level…surely they’d stop. Right?

Grammy Award-winning, singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat returns with a brand new EP, Gypsy Heart and a powerful new music video in which she makes a powerful statement about unfair beauty ideals by shunning hair and make-up. Here, we talk to Caillat about the man (yup!) who inspired the song, the impact of Photoshop, and why all women hate the way they look in photographs

How did the idea for your brand new single and video, “Try,” come about?
I went into the recording studio with Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and I told him that I was getting a lot of pressure to be someone I’m not, both musically and image-wise. Although I don’t want to do it, I’m just going to make these people happy. He started laughing, and said, we’re not going to do that. That’s not you, and that’s ridiculous of them to ask. That right there gave me the creative freedom. He said, “Let’s write about exactly what they’re asking you to do—to change yourself.” We started checking off all these things that all of us girls do everyday to get ready to go out. I told him that before coming to the studio I wanted to look pretty so I had my nails done, I made sure I had the best outfit on, I had my hair and makeup artist come over and make me look all polished. And the thing is that I like myself when I’m not that way, but I feel like other people might not like me that way. And I know that most women go through that. When you have blemishes on your skin, gain weight, or my friend has crooked teeth, or my mom’s roots are going gray. And everyone is trying to hide their faults from each other when we all have it. So Babyface inspired me to write this and it’s all from a personal experience.

I’m concerned about bias, or the perception of bias, because PolitiFact picked which stories to fact check and they didn’t check equal numbers of stories. For instance, with FOX, they checked 82 stories. For CNN, they fact checked 41 stories. For NBC/MSNBC, they fact checked 92 stories. For CBS, they fact checked 6 stories. And for ABC, they fact checked 71 stories.

There’s also a question of what time frame they’re tracking these statements over.
They tracked CNN from 7/26/09 to 7/6/14.
For NBC/MSNBC, they tracked from 4/6/09 to 7/1/14.
For ABC, they tracked from 7/26/09 to 7/6/14.
For CBS they tracked from 11/3/13 to 5/18/14.
And for FOX, they tracked from 6/10/09 to 6/24/14

Perhaps they should include a disclaimer that these numbers shouldn’t be used to compare and contrast the overall levels of truth of falsehood behind claims made by each station.
I say that because sites like The New Civil Rights Movement are indeed comparing and contrasting the stations based on how true or false their claims are.

Fox News just can’t handle the truth. Literally. Nor can they be trusted to report the truth, according to a new study by PolitiFact’s PunditFact group. The fact checkers there say that 60 percent of the claims made by Fox News’ pundits and on-air personalities are Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire false — to use their terms.

The other networks have work to do as well. PunditFact ruled 46 percent of the claims made by NBC News and MSNBC pundits and personalities to be Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire false. CNN came in at just 18 percent false. ABC and CBS News were both rated at 34 percent false.

60% of FOX news’ claims may have been MF, F, or PoF, but it’s not fair to compare that to NBC/MSNBC’s 46% MF, F, or PoF, because they’re not checking the same number of comments over the same time frame.

Looking at the numbers for CNN, one might come away from PolitiFact thinking that CNN does a better job at making True, Mostly True, or Half True statements. PolitiFact rates 83% of CNN’s claims as T, MT, or HT. They rate 67% of ABC’s claims as T, MT, or HT, NBC/MSNBC claims at 55%, CBS’ claims at 67%, and FOX claims at 40%.

I’m fine with PolitiFact rating individual claims as being True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire. But they need to have a disclaimer that says they haven’t checked *every* claim made on these stations, so any conclusion of the levels of truth or falsehood between stations will be misleading at best.

I wonder how they would rate Rachel maddows story about how politifact is often full of shit :-p I agree wth you, their “study” is pretty much shit

That’s not quite the conclusion I reached.
I think the vetting of the claims is most likely accurate. I just don’t think one can use their findings to conclude anything further bc they’re not doing a thorough vetting of every single claim made by a network. But then, they don’t claim to either. Basically, I think they need to be more transparent.
And I told them as much in an email I just sent.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the jihadist group better known by the acronym ISIS, has put out a call for the assassination of Nayef Al-Mutawa, creator of the superhero comic The 99.

The Kuwait Times reports that in a series of tweets, the group accused Al-Mutawa of mocking the 99 names of Allah, and offered a reward for his death. “Who can kill Nayef Al- Mutawa who makes fun of Allah’s names?” was posted by one ISIS account while another said, “Whoever finds him, kill him, and he will be rewarded.”

Islamic extremists get pissed off and offended over the most trivial things. There isn’t one person who is harmed by this comic book, yet they’re calling for the death of its creator.

While we’re all uber-excited about Batgirl’s redesigned costume, and while we know Gail Simone recently gave the upcoming creative team her blessing, we’ve all got the same concern: what’s going to happen to Alysia Yeoh, Barbara Gordon’s trans roommate who first appeared during Simone’s run on the series? Don’t worry, says Brenden Fletcher; Barbara might be moving out, but Alysia won’t be going anywhere. In fact, there’ll reportedly be more representation for LGBT characters in the future.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=53962
Announced on MTV News, Stewart and Fletcher, along with comics newcomer Babs Tarr on art, take over the series with October’s Issue #35. With a new creative team comes a new look, as Stewart and Tarr have given Batgirl’s uniform a top-to-bottom overhaul to go with the series new, brighter focus. Described by Fletcher as “[mixing] the best elements of ‘Veronica Mars’ and ‘Girls,’ with a dash of ‘Sherlock’ thrown in for good measure,” the series finds Batgirl leaving the rest of the Bat-family behind as she attends grad school and finds her own place in Gotham.

I’m almost tempted to end my boycott of DC just to buy this comic on the regular.

Well, I ran across more bad science. A British paper ran a story that breathlessly claims that redheads are going to go extinct because of climate change.

A gene mutation that yields red hair and pale skin which is more sensitive to light leaves DNA in skill cells more prone to sun damage and cancer, and if predictions of rising temperatures are correct evolution might cause it to regress.

Dumb articles like this only strengthen the climate change denialists. For there to be selective pressure against pale skin and red hair, there would have to be some reason why these people would be unable to reproduce. As far as I know, skin cancer is often quite treatable these days when caught early.

I hate it when the Redhead watches some cooking shows. They say recipes are available at their website, but that can be a lie. I show her the list of recipes available. Naturally, they are right and I am wrong….

The latest one in question is Cooking with the Wolfman on the First Nations Experience (FNX) network (available locally as a WCCY subchannel), who is a First Nations cook who studied French cooking, and is using the experience to modify traditional recipes. The one she wanted to see was on a venison meat pie (pasty from the sounds of it). Couldn’t find it. Did find a Quebec version. Not good enough.

I’m concerned about bias, or the perception of bias, because PolitiFact picked which stories to fact check and they didn’t check equal numbers of stories.

Well, yeah. There’s basically bias at every level. First, they or their readers select which claims to fact-check, so there is a SHIT-TON (part of the metric system — look it up) of selection bias going on. Hell, that’s part of who they are: they only check assertions that are already controversial.

But then you have to consider, “What makes a claim controversial?” Obviously, areas of political discord. Which means the stations highlighting political discord are going to be the ones most scrutinized.

That’s what makes the Fox vs. MSNBC number so illuminating. One group relies on making shit up more than the other, just to generate controversy. (Not a lot more, obviously. MSNBC doesn’t come off smelling completely of roses here.) And to me, the more you have to make shit up, the less tenable your position.

But yeah. You have two numbers: the number of times each group has been fact-checked (which relates to how controversial the group is), and the number of times those checks have turned out false (which relates to what fucking liars that group is — including MSNBC).

Fox News is by far the worst. But that doesn’t change the fact that MSNBC isn’t a saint.

Leaving on Sunday, random end-of-trip depression. Despite everything. It’s still fun to remove myself from the Real World.
Next group trip I’m organizing, though? Only for decent pay. Lost too many nerve cells this time ’round to do it for free again. :)

rq has revealed her secret plan! Having toured Canada and observed insufficient potatoes, she is determined to become Teh Canadian Potatoe № 1. The coup d’état is carefully planned to happen during the World Cup finals (mostly as insurance the locals won’t notice, or if they do, won’t be bothered to negatively react or send out the attack moose).

The French won’t send help because it’s summer and too close to Bastille Day, so they are all setting off on vacation…

The British will help, they will send their brand aircraft carrier. The one that has no planes…

USAlien’s response will be bogged down in Congress…

And most importantly, N.Korea will have a temper tantrum — not that anybody will notice the lack of change in behavior…

What her first decree will be is unknown. But probably involves potatoes. Or chocolate.

For lunch, I went to a favorite restaurant I haven’t visited much since the relocation of the lair. They had a new dish on the menu, an “Indian” (subcontinent) chicken tandoori, which the waiter “warned” me was very spicy.

It was so spicy a it probably rated about -17 Tera-Scovilles, and could single-handedly cause the heat-death of entire multiverse.

Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, has been accused of rape. A critical analysis of his statement is here:

Is Max Temkin a rapist? I don’t know. I do know that he’s written a manipulative post, though. I know that he’s spreading harmful rape culture myths under the cloak of being a “feminist and an advocate for women’s rights”. I know that he’s using intimidation tactics against someone who, because of his platform and wealth and gender, has far less power than he does. As one tumblr user put it, this is an epic piece of mansplaining.

That’s just focusing on his statement on this accusation, without getting into all of the rape jokes that were initially included in his game, as well as at least one blatantly transphobic card and whatever other examples of “punching down” there are. He’s gotten good at making pretty statements to deflect blame.

—

Sorry for not being around much lately. I’ve been having loads of connectivity issues and just managing my own work is difficult enough. It’s taken about half an hour now just to get one comment up. I’m finally getting a technician out to look at the lines this weekend and I’m hoping to get it fixed soon. They wouldn’t send anyone until I had a new router, just in case that was the problem. Oy.

Rawnaeris
*big gentle antiseptic hugs* I’m really sorry you’re feeling so awful and I hope the wonders of science and modern medicine can fix you up quickly.

–

TMM
Hello! Good to see you
That’s awful news. That game does make me uncomfortable though. There’s lots of potential for funniness, but yeah, the rape jokes always pop up. And ultimately it’s just “Penises are funny, amirite?” it seems like.

There’s someone with the same name as my new neighbor who has several restraining orders pending in court…I’ll be in court the same time as the next court date for them though so I guess I’ll know if I see him in court that day.

In response to the influx of Central American children fleeing to the southern border of the U.S., the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is repeating his belief that all national borders were determined by God and therefore anybody who crosses them without permission is directly offending the Creator.

In a column for BarbWire today, Fischer writes, “What we learn from the Bible is that borders are God’s idea, and that such borders are to be respected. They are not to be crossed without permission.”

As a result, he writes, “[o]ur southern border is there by God’s design” and those who “regard it as something not worth respecting and defending” are insulting God. […]

I don’t think I got them all. Maddow has excoriated PolitiFact so often that I might exceed Pharyngula links-per-comment rules if I posted them all at once. I agree that the “fact” part should be stripped out of PolitiFact’s name.

One of Maddow’s segments made the point that we actually need a reliable fact-checking source. It’s essential. That PolitiFact adds to the general swamp of misinformation is just unacceptable.

Tony @460, yes there are transcripts for The Rachel Maddow Show, but they are difficult to search and you often have to “show more text” within the right day of the right month and year to get what you are looking for. Here’s the transcript for the relevant segment from January 25, 2012:

MADDOW: In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. That`s what he said.

So the self-proclaimed fact-checking news site, PolitiFact, decided to fact check this claim by the president.

PolitiFact describes itself as a nonpartisan journalism enterprise. They fact check what politicians and public figures say and then they rate the statements with this thingy.

They call it the truth-o-meter or the truthometer, potato, potato. So PolitiFact looked into this part of the president`s speech. “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.”

They went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics to figure this out, I don`t know if they looked at this specific report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but within about 15 seconds of Googling, we found this and you`d find it too. From a couple weeks back, January 6th, 2012, in this report, the bureau says, since February 2010, quote, “The private sector has added 3.2 million jobs.” So that`s 22 months. In 22 months, businesses added more than 3 million jobs.

PolitiFact came to the same conclusion. So, put a check mark next to that part. It checks out. What the president said is true.

PolitiFact then went on to say, OK, the second part of Obama`s statements, the fact that businesses made more jobs last year than any year since 2005. It turns out, that`s true too.

So to sum up, president says thing A and thing B. PolitiFact looks into it and decides that thing A and thing B as stated by the president, both true.

So, on their truth-o-meter, they rate the statements half true. How did two trues add up to a half true?

Quoting PolitiFact, “Obama is correct on both counts, when using private sector jobs numbers.” That`s probably why he said businesses, right? Right. “But he went too far when he implicitly credited his
administration`s policies. So we rate the statement half true.”

When he implicitly credited his administration`s policies?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Businesses have created more than 3 million jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: PolitiFact, what is wrong with you? You think the president calls himself businesses, like it`s a nickname for himself. You think he look himself in the mirror and says, hey, businesses, looking good.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Businesses have created more than 3 million jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: What are you talking about?

After the economist Jared Bernstein and half of the English-speaking Internet L so OL at PolitiFact for screwing this up today, PolitiFact went back and revised their initial finding. They said this, “Our initial half
true rating was based upon an interpretation that Obama was crediting his policies for the jobs increases. But we`ve concluded that he was not making that linkage as strongly as we initially believed.”

OK. So, now, we`re back to something that calls itself PolitiFact, fact checking the president saying thing A and thing B, both of which PolitiFact says are true. What is their chastened revised new rating for their fact check of the president saying two things that they admit are true? What`s their new rating?

Mostly true! Mostly true.

PolitiFact, you are fired. You are a mess. You are fired. You are undermining the definition of the word “fact” in the English language by pretending to it in your name. The English language wants its word back.

You are an embarrassment. You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on fact-ishness, let alone fact. You are fired.

MADDOW: I tend to not have a great memory. By this time in the show each night, honestly, I do not even really remember how I got to this desk on time for the start of the show at the top of the hour. I mean, I know
it involves running down the hallway, and somebody putting eye make-up on me. But, really, it`s just a fog. I don`t remember.

That said, I distinctly remember this happened early last year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: PolitiFact, you are fired, you are a mess. You are fired. You are undermining the definition of the word “fact” in the English language by pretending to it in your name. The English language wants its
word back.You are an embarrassment. You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on factishness let alone fact. You are fired.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: I thought that was pretty finite. I thought that was clear. Apparently, that was not clear enough because disaster has struck again. Stay tuned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTINA NAVRATILOVA, TENNIS ICON: We still don`t have equal rights. I have been getting on Twitter, why does this matter? I don`t care — which is kind of code for “I really don`t want to know”. But it does matter because in 29 states in this country, you can still get fired for not just being gay, but if your employer thinks you`re gay, you could still get fired.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Upon hearing retired tennis player Martin Navratilova explain that on a Sunday morning TV show, a group called PolitiFact, a group that has “word” fact in its name, that has anointed himself the arbiter of truth and all things political, PolitiFact decided to check that whole thing out, this thing this person on television is saying about policy in the American states, could this thing be true? We, PolitiFact, are on the case.Here again is the fact that PolitiFact decided to test in its own special way
.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NAVRATILOVA: In 29 states in this country, you can still get fired for not just being gay but if your employer thinks that you`re gay, you could still get fired.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: OK, that`s the claim. In 29 states, you can still get fired for being gay or even if the boss just thinks you`re gay.

Here is how PolitiFact decided to evaluate that claim, quote, “21 states plus D.C. explicitly prohibit unemployment discrimination based on sexual orientation.” As you can see them doing the math. Fifty states minus 21, carry the two, that means, yes, we`ve done that math.

That means, yes, it`s true, the remaining 29 states do not ban unemployment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

So, it`s true, like she said, 29 states don`t have anti-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation.

It`s true. If you live in one of the 29 states, there`s nothing in state law that stops a business from putting up a sign that says gays need not apply. It is true, PolitiFact looked into it. Employers can fire you if you`re gay or they think you are gay. That`s state law in 29 states.

That`s true.

PolitiFact even publish in the article a map of those 29 states, proving that when Martina Navratilova said 29 states have laws like that, that was a true statement.

So, the retired tennis lady says that`s true of 29 states. PolitiFact decides to fact check that statement. It finds what she said was true about those 29 states.

And so then, PolitiFact with the name fact in its name revealed the results of their fact-check of her statement — their statement which they found to be true. They rated her statement: half true, because they checked what they said and found it was true, so then they rated her half true, because they are PolitiFact.

And this is why the very important concept of fact-checking has become pointless at a time in our country when we really need it to mean something, because PolitiFact exists and has branded themselves the generic arbitrator of fact and the paragon of fact-checking, and they are terrible at it. They are terrible.

They fact checked a statement about state law, found it to be true, decided it didn`t seem seemly or whatever to actually just call it true, then they searched other unrelated information about how there are other kind of things, besides states like some companies they don`t want to discriminate, and doesn`t that count for something?

No! Because that is not the statement you are fact checking. The statement you were supposed to be fact checking is true. And until somebody figures out how to sue you in order to retrieve the meaning of the word “fact” from the dark and airless hole you stuffed it into, PolitiFact, and no, it is not OK for you to just make this stuff up. You are truly
terrible.

Fact checking has to count for something and, PolitiFact, you are ruining it for everyone. There.

Q: Did the new health care law give Obama a Nazi-like “private army” of 6,000 people?

A: No. Contrary to false Internet rumors, the new Ready Reserve Corps of doctors and other health workers will report to the surgeon general and be like the “ready reserves” in other uniformed services. They will be used during health emergencies.

The Updates come quite frequently since Politics and Government Policies is a subject rife with rumors. They also present evidence about why a particular story is true or false, so they are quite good at what they do.

Tony, after giving it some thought, I think factcheck.org is the best resource. However, I sometimes do my own fact-checking.

In other news, here’s an update on the Utah fight against marriage equality — short version: Utah conservative religious whackadoodles are losing.

In 10 days, same-sex couples married in Utah may be able to apply for spousal benefits.

A federal appeals court Friday denied Utah’s request for a stay that would have indefinitely halted all movement toward providing gay and lesbian spouses benefits, pending the state’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that ordered Utah to honor those unions.

A three-judge panel at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the state’s request late Friday, but also extended a temporary stay through July 21, giving the state time to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

That gives Utah 10 days to appeal to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees the circuit, and reiterate its argument that allowing same-sex couples to receive spousal benefits before a federal appeals court has ruled on whether the state is legally obligated to do so would undermine the legal system and the state’s right to an appeal. […]

Sarah Palin is frothing at the mouth again (sorry, I don’t mean to imply she is insane — not making a diagnosis — just saying that what comes out of her mouth is often, metaphorically speaking, frothing).

Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, “no mas.”

It’s about destroying this CHRISTIAN country. Like the bony Supreme said to the Egyptian, she wants anything except the US Constitution used by other countries because ours is “old and no longer relevant” — she told him to use the African Constitution or one of the EUROPEAN constitutions… preferably one created AFTER WWII. Surely to high heaven, Americans should know what she means…. and it ain’t High Heaven directing her. VOTE ONLY FOR CHRISTIANS. Take back the USA.

Sorry, they already have changed the old United States Motto from ” In God We Trust ‘ over to ” In Allah we Trust ” and the currency replacing the dollar the “Amero” will be coming out in a couple of months after the dollar collapses under the weight of our $17 Trillion dollar Debt and the United states is dissolved into the North American Union as per NAFTA, hence the encouraged and allowed invasion on the southern border which will no longer be there.

I don’t live by what Breitbart and Fox say. Matter of fact I don’t even watch Fox. Neither do I listen to Rush, Hannity or Beck. I don’t need to. I’m capable of thinking for myself and not ashamed to do so. Not like black, Asian or Latino liberals who demolish their conservative counterparts with vile smears not heard since Jim Crow.

Obama was reelected solely because the liberal media systematically concealed anti-Obama news like Benghazi and propagandized shamelessly for the White House. This is the only reason Obama stayed in office despite unemployment nearly twice that under Bush and a near-doubling of the price of gasoline as well as the Democrat-created housing crash.

Obama is a dictator. He has neutered the most powerful entity in our Constitutional Republic, Congress. Take action America, demand that Congress do it’s job and IIMPEACH OBAMA! […]

[W]hen questioned about his position on social issues, [Minnesota House candidate Bob Frey (R)] added that it “does certainly need to be addressed for what it is. It’s not about the gay agenda but about the science and the financial impact of that agenda. It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle.”
Frey then explained his view: “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it’s the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”

[…] But owner Kersten said there is no bathroom “allotment” beyond scheduled breaks and that workers were only disciplined when the tracking system showed they were taking excessive bathroom breaks. He cited one worker who was tracked using the bathroom six times in one shift, including two minutes before his scheduled morning break. […]

Some day this won’t be news.
Some day people won’t blink twice when they hear that someone is attracted to a member of the same sex.
Some day coming out of the closet won’t have any bearing on your social, political, or professional life.
Some day being openly gay won’t cause hordes of bigots to denounce you without having ever met you.
Some day, characters of various sexualities will be presented in the media in such number that young children will see a reflection of themselves and realize they’re not alone in the world. They’ll be able to see that a person can be who they are without irrational hatred and bigotry.
Some day.
But not today.
Today, this is news. This adds to the message that gay people are everywhere, and we’re not here to upset a nation. We’re not here to cause strife and the destruction of the anyone’s religion. We’re here to do what other human beings do: live our lives. That’s a message that needs to be heard. So, Ian Thorpe? Thank you. It probably wasn’t an easy choice for you to make, but it was a courageous one.

During a speech on the House floor Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) compared the surge of unaccompanied migrant children to soldiers invading France during World War II. Criticizing President Obama’s request for Congress to provide $3.7 billion in emergency funds to process the deportation proceedings of more than 52,000 children, mostly fleeing violence in Central America, Gohmert asked Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) to “use whatever means” like troops, ships of war, or taxes to “stop the invasion.”

“Even with $3.7 billion that’s requested, there’s no way for what’s being called for is going to stop the invasion that’s occurring,” Gohmert said. “That’s why I’m hoping that my governor will utilize Article 1, Section 10, that allows a state that is being invaded — in our case more than twice as many just in recent months, more than twice as many than invaded France on D-Day with a doubling of that coming en route, on their way here now under Article 1, Section 10, the state of Texas would appear to have the right, not only to use whatever means, whether it’s troops, even using ships of war, even exacting a tax on interstate commerce that wouldn’t normally be allowed to have or utilize, they’d be entitled in order to pay to stop the invasion.”[…]

At the beginning of July, 26-year-old Mallory Loyola gave birth to a baby girl. Two days later, the state of Tennessee charged her with assault. Loyola is the first woman to be arrested under a new law in Tennessee that allows the state to criminally charge mothers for potentially causing harm to their fetuses by using drugs.

The legislation, which officially took effect about a week ago, stipulates that “a woman may be prosecuted for assault for the illegal use of a narcotic drug while pregnant, if her child is born addicted to or harmed by the narcotic drug.” However, this may not actually apply to Loyola’s case. So far, there’s no evidence the young woman either used a narcotic drug or caused harm to her newborn child.

According to local news reports, Loyola tested positive for methamphetamine and admitted that she smoked that drug several days before giving birth. Meth is not considered to be a narcotic, which is a legal class of drugs that refers to opiates like heroin and prescription painkillers. Tennessee’s new law was passed specifically in response to fears about babies being exposed to opiates in utero, something that can lead to “Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.” […]

The documentary follows several young troubled teens who have been sent to Escuela Caribe, (photo left) a Christian “school” in the Dominican Republic, specializing in “Culture Shock Therapy” and behavior modification programs.

One of the children the story follows is 17 year old David. He recounts how he was awakened one day by his parents and told that he was being sent to a school in a foreign country. With much protest, David was eventually “dragged to his parent’s car with a belt around his waist” and sent off to the Dominican Republic.

In the beginning of the documentary, the school allows a camera crew to follow the daily activities and interview the students; even some staff were interviewed. As more and more of the story unfolded, I sat there feeling anger growing inside of me thinking, this isn’t school, this is abuse. Child abuse!

These kids were being broken down by pastors and so called house fathers (older peers that help enforce punishment and oversee the dorms).

[…]

The kids’ daily routines consisted of, cooking, cleaning, manual labor and bible studies, with punishment for deviation. Routine inspections were also performed on their dorms, with what seemed like military or prison expectations. The beds were made in military fashion with special corners. If clothes weren’t properly hung, they were ripped out of the closet and thrown on the floor and then the owners were punished.

The students were subjected to a range of abuse including intense forced labor, physical beatings (called “swats”), and various forms of emotional abuse. Student progress was recorded on point sheets. The higher you scored the higher the level you attained and the less abuse you were subjected to. The house fathers would coerce the students by bribing them with the point sheets. Students had to ask permission for everything. “May I step in and eat?” was a question from Beth, one of the female students, at dinner time. When she didn’t get an answer, she just shrugged her shoulders and said, “Patience is a virtue, I guess!”

[…]

With a yearly tuition of $72,000, Escuela Caribe has a higher tuition than the average tuition at Harvard University – $38,000 to $60,000 a year.

[…]

David’s friend Angie, heard about the place through a note David sent through the documentary crew. She began getting a group together to go down and get David out on his eighteenth birthday. They tried to get Marc Ellis of the United States Consulate involved because David was an adult, but when they confronted Escuela Caribe with paperwork, they were told David wasn’t there and they were not able to see him. It became clear to Angie and the other would-be rescuers, that they were not going to gain access to David.

They returned to the United States empty handed.

Seven weeks later, a U.S. Judge ordered a writ of habeas corpus requiring David to be set free. Upon his release David was scared into not talking to anyone. Escuela Caribe threatened to sue the documentary team. At first, for fear of getting anyone in trouble, David complied and wouldn’t speak about his ordeal to Angie or the documentary team. But shortly thereafter, David reached out and explained that the staff had warned him that if he went further with the interviews, he would destroy any chance of having a relationship with his parents.

David met in Colorado with the crew and wanted his story told.

[…]

These schools exist because they are in places out of reach of the federal Government. None of these programs are subject to any federal regulation. Since the 1970’s, at least 157 American teenagers have died in behavior modification programs. According to Forbes magazine, programs like this are a 2 billion dollar industry. Most parents they say are tricked into sending their children to programs like this.

Retiring Rep. George Miller from Ca, has tried bringing action in Congress 4 times, failing to ever have this matter voted on.

In January 2012, New Horizons Youth Ministries and Escuela Caribe shut its doors. The property in the Dominican Republic was donated to Lifeline Youth and Family Services. They renamed it “Crosswinds”. They are currently enrolling teens in their behavior modification program.

Beatrice:
I’m here. Deathly bored too.
Kinda wishing I could be at the beach right now bc it seems everyone is at the Blue Angels Airshow. Well, everyone who was smart enough to leave for the beach early. There’s a lot of people stuck on the bridge heading toward Pensacola Beach.

I just got off the phone with my brother and his daughters (ages 9 and 4). He hadn’t returned my calls for months, and he finally answered (I call every few weeks, maybe, he’s been historically bad at staying in touch). I haven’t been able to see his kids in…wow 4 months, that makes me really sad. They live in Michigan. The four year old got on the phone last and she said “[Older sister] told me you’re coming to visit. I never see you. I keep thinking you’re dead. I’m very glad you’re coming to visit.” I was torn about whether to laugh or cry at that. (They live on a farm, and when they don’t see a cat for a while, they presume it’s dead. It’s a matter of fact life lesson for the girls. I think that’s where her conclusion came from).

Ugh, been a busy half-day making a pad for one of the commode bars from a terry-cloth hand towel, and some Velcro™, both sew-on (the piece of towel) and stick on (on the commode). Must say it looks OK, and the Redhead will perform the critical use tests in due time. It can be removed and washed. Now I have a template for making more of the bar covers, and more of the towel and sew-on Velcro™ left for a backup.

Tommy Ramone, a co-founder of the seminal punk band the Ramones and the last surviving member of the original group, has died, a business associate said Saturday.

Dave Frey, who works for Ramones Productions and Silent Partner Management, confirmed that Ramone died on Friday. Frey didn’t have additional details. Ramone was 65.

Tommy Ramone, a drummer, co-founded the Ramones in 1974 in New York along with singer Joey Ramone, bassist Dee Dee Ramone and guitarist Johnny Ramone. All four band members had different last names, but took the common name Ramone. […]

A lot of planning went into the design of the bar cover, trying to make sure all facets were covered.

[rant]I heat the term “pre-planning” a lot, but I don’t get it. Either you planning to plan, or you are planning. I never did any “pre-planning for this project, or any of the others I have worked on over the years. It was always planning to make it successful.
Another pet peeve, pre-drilling on home improvement show. Either you drill or you don’t. When you drill isn’t important, nor does it deserve a prefix.[/rant]

Update on the goals of the militia gathering on the US southern border:

The leader of an effort to rally a Bundy Ranch-style militia at the Texas border said this week that his troops were fighting for “national sovereignty.”

“We have patriots all across this country who are willing to sacrifice their time, their monies, even quit their jobs to come down and fight for freedom, liberty and national sovereignty,” Chris Davis said, as quoted by Rio Grande Valley TV station KRGV.

Davis would not tell KRGV how many members make up his group, Operation Secure Our Border, nor offer an outline of when and where the group planned the deploy along the Texas-Mexico border.

Davis, who has been identified as a member of the Second Amendment activist group Open Carry Texas, also reportedly released a YouTube video recently in which he issued a warning to those migrants crossing the border illegally: “Get back across the border or you will be shot.”

A Virginia woman told TPM on Friday that she recently discovered a stack of anti-Hillary Clinton bumper stickers at a local GOP office, despite denials from the state party that it had anything to do with the stickers.

Carole Donoghue, a retired journalist, said she found the bumper stickers at Fairfax County Republican Committee headquarters in Fairfax, Va. The bumper stickers read “Monica Lewinsky’s X-Boyfriend’s Wife for President.” In small print, they included the words “Authorized By Republican Party Of Virginia.” […]

I agree with you, Nerd, on the use of “pre-planning.” That triggers a “dafuq” reaction in my brain.

In other news, somebody finally calls it like it is:

[…]

“Rubio is an idiot,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard said, as quoted by The Guardian. “He says he is not a scientist so he doesn’t have a view about climate change and sea-level rise and so won’t do anything about it.”

Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential contender, has said that he doesn’t agree with the notion of man-made climate change. […]

The mayor of the Italian municipality of Borgosesia is seeking to ban public kissing between members of the same sex, calling the behavior “morally harmful.” Under the proposed measure, couples could be fined up to 500 euros ($680 USD) for engaging in the act.

“Kissing in public between homosexuals? No thanks,” Gianluca Buonanno told Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the Huffington Post reported. “I don’t like two people of the same sex making public displays of affection. It’s a question of respect. And I’m convinced that it’s also morally harmful for children.”

Some members of the European Parliament quickly dismissed Borgosesia’s effort, however. The “new decree is just the latest, pathetic publicity stunt by a narrow-minded man who desperately wants to be in the spotlight,” European Parliament member Daniele Viotti told Pink News, and claimed that Buonanno is giving “a voice to all the worst values that, unfortunately, are still circulating in Europe.” “It would be an interesting psychological exercise to ask why Mr. Buonanno is so obsessed with homosexuality,” Viotti added. […]